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JOHN  P.  JONSS 
Coinage  of  silver  dollars 


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COINAGE  OF  SILVER  DOLLARS. 


SPEECH 


HON.  JOHN  P.  JONES, 


OF  NEVADA, 


SENATE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES, 


FEBRUARY    14,    1878. 


WASHINGTON. 
1878. 


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http://www.archive.org/details/coinageofsilverdOOjone 


SPE  ti  C  U 


HON.    JOHN    P .    JOXES 


The  Senate  having  under  consideration  the  bill  (H.  R.  No.  10!»3)  ti>  authorize  the 
free  coinage  of  the  standard  silver  dollar  and  to  restore  its  Legal-tender  character — 

Mr.  JONES,  of  Nevada,  said: 

Mr.  President:  The  discussion  here  and  elsewhere  upon  the  remone- 

lization  of  silver  in  this  country,  and  in  respect  especially  to  the  pay- 
ment of  the  interest  and  principal  of  the  national  bonds  in  silver  dol- 
lars of  412$  grains,  has  been  made  to  turn  almost  entirely  upon  ques- 
tions of  equity.  The  naked,  legal  proposition  that  all  outstanding 
national  bonds  not  specifically  payable  in  lawful  money  or  otherwise 
than  in  gold  or  silver  are  payable  at  the  option  of  the  Government 
in  either  gold  or  silver  coin  of  the  old  standard  is  so  clear  that  but 
few  have  been  found  to  squarely  deny  it  and  I  trust  I  may  not  be 
deemed  discourteous  when  I  say  no  one  has  fortified  his  denial  with 
arguments  that  have  reached  the  plane  of  serious  criticism. 

But  it  is  vehemently  urged  that  it  would  be  a  violation  of  every 
principle  of  justice  to  pay  them  in  accordance  with  the  strict  Letter 
of  the  law  authorizing  their  issue,  on  account  of  the  depreciation 
which  it  is  alleged  has  taken  place  in  the  value  of  silver  since  the 
enactment  of  the  law  and  that  the  passage  now  of  a  law  permitting 
such  payment  would  dishonor  the  nation  and  swindle  the  public 
creditor  out  of  a  portion  of  his  honest  expectations,  if  not  of  his  just 
demands. 

It  is  also  claimed  that  with  some  modifications  the  same  violation 
of  equity  would  be  involved  in  the  payment  in  silver  of  private,  cor- 
porate, municipal,  and  State  indebtedness. 

This  proposition  involves  first  a  question  of  principle  and  nest  a 
question  of  fact. 

First.  As  a  question  of  political  ethics,  are  governments  morally 
bound,  in  respect  of  their  own  debts  or  generally  in  resp<  ct  of  the 
relation  between  debtor  aud  creditor,  to  maintain  not  only  invaria- 
bility in  the  coin  standard,  meaning  thereby  weight  and  purity  of 
metal,  but  also  to  maintain  invariability  in  the  commercial  value  or 
purchasing  power  of  such  coin  ? 

This  question  was  never  raised  until  very  modern  times  nor  until 
the  purchasing  power  of  metallic  money  manifested  a  decreasing 
tendency,  and  was  never  raised  except  by  the  creditors,  fundholders, 
annuitants,  and  income  classes  of  the  world.  It  was  not  raised  by 
the  business  and  debtor  interests  during  the  forty  years  aftei 
when,  according  to  recognized  authorities,  the  value  of  metallic 
money,  consisting  of  both  gold  and  silver,  rose  fully  145  per  cent. 
and  when  the  pressure  of  debts  was  constantly  increasing  in  corre- 
sponding ratio.  The  struggling  debtor  did  not  theu  raise  this  ques- 
tion of  equity  nor  demand  that  creditors,  public  or  private,  should 
be  compelled  by  law  to  accept  such  a  diminution  in  the  standard 
weight  of  dollars,  francs,  or  sovereigns  as  would  maintain  invaria- 


612537 


bility  m  their  commercial  value,  nor  did  they  propose  to  effect  that 
object  by  increasing  the  number  of  the  money  metals.  Nor  did  the 
representatives  of  the  people  or  the  public  press  then  maintain  that 
it  would  be  dishonorable  in  creditors  to  exact  from  debtors  payment 
in  coin  so  enormously  appreciated. 

The  epithets  of  swindler  and  repudiator,  according  to  modern  ethics, 
seem  not  to  apply  when,  through  the  vicissitudes  of  mining  or  other 
causes,  money  is  rising  in  value  and  creditors  are  thereby  enabled  to 
reap  where  they  have  not  sown,  to  exact  more  than  they  have  loaned. 
Under  all  circumstances,  as  it  would  seem,  the  interests  of  the  cred- 
itor classes  are  to  be  protected,  and  if  possible  enlarged.  The  epithets 
of  swindler  and  repudiator  are  reserved  for  the  debtor  classes,  when, 
from  the  operation  of  causes  which  th6y  have  not  brought  about  and 
over  which  they  have  no  control,  a  divergence  occurs  in  the  value  of 
the  money  metals,  in  either  of  which  they  have  the  right  to  pay  if 
they  do  not  foolishly  exercise  their  option  by  paying  in  the  dearer 
metal.  They  are  denounced  as  lunatics  if  they  demand  the  privilege 
of  paying  iu  accordance  with  the  precise  terms  of  their  contracts. 
The  people  are  denounced  in  these,  dishonoring  terms  if  they  dare  to 
resist  attempts  either  to  increase  the  weight  of  the  coins  they  have 
promised  or  to  diminish  the  number  of  the  money  metals  existing 
when  the  contracts  were  made. 

The  doctrine  that  governments  should  guarantee  the  exchangeable 
value  of  metallic  money  as  well  as  its  weight  and  purity  was  broached 
for  the  first  time  when  the  sudden  flood  of  gold  from  California  and 
Australia  had  begun  to  make  itself  manifest  through  an  increase  in 
general  prices.  It  was  then  that  the  creditor  interest,  which  had. 
never  proposed  prior  to  1849  that  the  rise  in  the  value  of  money  which 
was  then  occurring  should  be  prevented  by  legislation,  were  clamor- 
ous in  the  name  of  honor  and  good  faith,  national  and  individual, 
that  the  threatened  fall  should  be  prevented.  The  measures  pro- 
posed to  accomplish  this  end  have  been  to  diminish  the  volume  of 
money  in  existence  by  demonetizing  one  of  the  metals,  or  when  that 
was  impracticable  to  limit  the  coinage  of  one  of  the  metals.  These 
measures  they  have  induced  several  governments  to  adopt,  and  if 
they  shall  prove  insufficient  their  next  steps  will  be  to  propose  to 
demonetize  both  the  metals  and  to  adopt  some  other  kind  of  money 
which  shall  hold  out  the  promise  of  greater  scarcity. 

So  far  as  this  question  of  honor  and  equity  is  concerned,  I  shall  con- 
tent myself  at  this  time  with  declaring  my  deliberate  conviction  to 
be  that  the  metallic-money  system  loses  the  only  recommendation 
which  it  has  if  its  value  is  not  remitted  to  the  automatic  limitation 
of  production  without  any  governmental  interference  whatever.  On 
this  point  I  agree  with  all  the  advocates  of  metallic  money,  from  John 
Locke  down  to  the  Senator  from  Vermont,  [Mr.  Edmunds.]  In  a 
speech  delivered  in  the  Senate  on  December  5, 1867,  Mr.  Edmunds 
said: 

Our  own  gold  and  .silver  coins  always  have  been  and  are  still  defined  by  law  to 
contain  in  each  denomination,  be  it  a  dime,  a  dollar,  or  an  eagle,  a  certain  named 
wei  .lit  of  silver  or  gold.  They  are  the  ultiuiates  of  value,  the  money  of  the  Gov- 
ernment. 

And  he  fortified  his  position  by  quotations  from  John  Locke,  whose 
works  he  declared  to  be  a  "boon  to  mankind,"  one  of  these  quota- 
tions being  as  follows : 

All  contracts  or  engagements  are  to  be  deemed  fully  discharged  and  satisfied  by 
payment  of  the  specific  quantity  or  sum  of  money  agreed  upon,  without  having 
any  regard  to  the  value  of  money  with  respect  toother  things  at  the  different  times 
of  contracting  and  discharging  of  debts. 


5 

This  quotation,  of  his  own  selection,  from  hie  favorite  authority, 
will,  I  have  no  doubt,  be  conclusive  with  the  Senator  from  Vermont, 

and  ought  to  be  conclusive  with  the  Senate,  upon  the  .justice  and 
equity  of  paying  debts  in  strict  accordance  with  the  letter  of  the  con- 
tract. The  question  of  fact,  whether  or  not  silver  has  losi  purchasing 
power  in  a  corresponding  ratio  I  o  the  widening  of  the  relation  between 
it  and  gold  since  1873, or  whether  it  has  lost  purchasing  poVer  to  any 
extent  whatever  since  that  time,  is  the  particular  question  which  I 
now  propose  briefly  to  discuss.  J  think  it  will  be  made  very  clearly 
r<>  appear  that  silver  since  1873,  although  discrowned  and  shorn  of 
notary  function,  denied  mintage  throughout  the  entire  western 
world,  and  degraded  to  The  rank  of  a  commodity,  instead  of  having 
become  less  valuable  has  nevertheless  increased  in  its  command  over 
services  and  all  kinds  of  property;  that  both  gold  and  silver  have 
gained  in  purchasing  power,  and  that  silver  only  seems  to  havefallen 
in  value  because  it  has  not  risen  to  so  great  an  extent,  as  gold. 

If  these  positions  can  be  established,  or  if  all  the  known  facts  tend 
to  establish  them,  then  the  equitable  objection  to  the  payment  of  the 
national  bonds  in  silver  dollars  of  412+  grains  completely  fails  and 
must  be  abandoned.  Even  if  it  were  true  as  a  question  of  honorable 
interpretation  of  the  contract  and  of  the  duties  of  the  Government 
relative  to  its  money,  that  it  is  bound  to  maintain  the  commercial 
value  of  its  coin,  the  payment  of  its  debts  in  silver  dollars  of  the  old 
standard  conld  violate  no  rule  of  justice  or  honor  if  the  power  in  ex- 
change of  412+  grains  of  the  commodity  silver  is  no  was  great  or  greater 
than  was  the  power  in  exchange  of  a  coined  dollar  of  that  weight  in 
1673,  which  was  then  both  the  legal  and  market  equivalent  of  the 
gold  dollar. 

Exchangeable  value  is  the  only  kind  of  value  with  which  econo- 
mists have  to  deal.  What  is  it  and  where  does  it.  reside  ?  This  ques- 
tion has  been  often  asked  and  variously  answered.  I  will  not  elabo- 
rate the  reasons  supporting  the  definition  of  it  which  I  shall  give. 
Exchangeable  value  resides  in  the  human  mind.  It  is  the  mental 
estimation  or  appreciation  of  desirable  objects  or  things,  and  is 
measured  by  the  sacrifice  which  it  is  necessary  to  make  in  order  to 
obtain  them.  Hence  it  follows  that  the  value  of  the  money  in  which 
debts  are  paid  must  be  measured  by  the  sacrifice  which  nations  and 
individuals  are  required  to  make  in  order  to  obtain  it.  The  question 
whether  money  has  appreciated  or  depreciated  between  two  given 
periods  can  be  solved  only  by  a  comparison  of  the  sacrifices  in  labor 
and  property  necessary  for  its  acquisition  at  the  two  periods  respect- 
ively, tinder  this  definition,  bas  silver  depreciated  in  value  within 
the  last  five  years  ?  Does  it  require  less  sacrifice  of  labor  or  property 
to  acquire  a  silver  dollar  of  412+  grains  than  it  did  when  it  was  de- 
monetized ?    Is  it  a  ninety-cent  dollar  ? 

Has  the  commercial  value  of  silver  diminished  since  September, 
1873,  when  its  market  price  was  fifty-nine  pence  in  gold  per  ounce,  and 
when,  therefore,  the  silver  and  gold  dollais  under  the  legal  relation 
in  this  country  were  coincident  in  value  f 

Will  a  given  weight  of  silver  exchange  now  for  less,  of  not  one 
or  two  but  of  the  general  range  of  commodities  that  enter  into  the 
consumption  and  use  of  mankind,  than  it  would  then  ?  Has  it  lost 
since  then  purchasing  power  ?  Will  it  buy  less  of  labor,  of  houses,  or 
of  lands  ?  Will  it  purchase  less  of  the  necessities,  comforts,  conven- 
iences or  luxuries  of  life  now  than  then  ? 

Bastiat,  in  his  terse  economical  definitions,  says  that  value  is  the 
relation  which  services  and  commodities  bear  to  each  other  in  ex- 
change.   Does  a  given  weight  of  silver  bear  a  lower  relation  in 


G 

exchange  to  other  things  generally  than  it  did  when  the  silver  dollar 
of  412£  grains  was  the  commercial  equivalent  of  the  present  gold 
dollar  I  It  is  true  that  the  gold  dollar  will  now  purchase  10  per  cent, 
more  silver  than  it  would  in  the  fall  of  1873  ;  is  it  not  equally  true 
that  it  will  purchase  in  every  country  an  average  of  twice  10  per 
cent,  more  of  all  other  things  than  it  would  then  ? 

In  deciding  whether  silver  has  or  has  not  depreciated  in  value  it  is 
indispensable  that  all  the  facts  bearing  upon  the  question  be  viewed 
from  a  proper  point  of  observation.  In  order  to  discover  the  direc- 
tion in  which  a  boat  removing  when  headed  to  the  current  the  shore 
and  not  the  stream  must  be  observed.  Upon  an  alteration  in  the  ex- 
change relations  between  two  commodities  or  between  a  single  com- 
modity and  money,  it  is  apparent  as  between  them  alone  that  one  has 
risen  or  that  theother  has  fallen  in  value.  But  in  order  to  decide 
correctly  which  has  really  risen  and  which  really  fallen,  comparison 
must  be  made  between  their  present  relations  respectively  and  their 
previous  relations  to  all  other  things  in  exchange. 

A  fall  in  the  price  of  any  one  commodity  would  be  justly  regarded 
as  a  fall  in  its  value  and  not  as  a  rise  in  the  value  of  money,  and  such 
fall  might,  to  all  appearances,  overtake  one  commodity  after  another 
until  the  whole  range  of  commodities  and  services  would  seem  to  have 
fallen  and  money  would  seem  to  have  remained  stationary.  But  all 
sound  thinkers  and  waiters  on  economical  science  agree  that  this  is 
impossible  and  that  a  fall  in  general  prices  is  the  sure  and  only  proof 
of  a  rise  in  the  value  of  money.  But  to  the  casual  observer  it  would 
seem  otherwise,  because  a  rise  in  the  value  of  the  "  monetary  unit 
comes  in  such  an  impenetrable  disguise  that  probably  few  minds  are 
even  prepared  to  entertain  the  idea  of  such  au  alteration  having  oc- 
curred." 

The  Englishman  who  looks  through  spectacles  made  of  gold  sov- 
ereigns believes  without  a  single  doubt — in  fact  knows — that  for  the 
past  four  years  he  has  seen  silver  fluctuating  and  falling  in  value. 
The  citizen  of  this  country,  looking  through  the  metallic  monetary 
unit  last  in  use  here,  and  with  which  he  is  most  familiar,  or  when  he 
borrows  the  Englishman's  spectacles,  thinks  he  sees  the  same  thing. 
But  the  East  Indian,  who  looks  through  spectacles  made  of  silver 
rupees,  is  equally  confident  that  during  the  same  period  he  has  seen 
gold  fluctuating' and  rising.  The  occupants  of  railroad  cars  on  con- 
tiguous and  parallel  lines,  one  of  which  is  in  motion  and  passing  the 
other,  may  be  easily  mistaken,  if  they  have  no  landmark  to  govern 
their  conclusions,  as  to  which  car  is  moving.  The  occupants  of  each 
would  be  sure  that  the  other  was  in  motion  if  the  cars  moved  as 
silently  and  insensibly  as  do  values. 

If  the  cars  were  moving  on  east  and  west  liues,  they  would  be  very 
apt  to  differ  as  to  the  process  by  which  one  had  reached  a  point  to 
the  eastward  of  the  other,  and  it  might  be  true  in  fact,  contrary  to 
their  concurring  opinions,  that  both  had  moved  to  the  westward,  the 
one  having  moved  farther  to  the  westward  than  the  other. 

Countless  generations  of  men  have  lived  and  died  in  the  unhesitat- 
ing belief  in  the  geocentric  theory  of  the  universe  and  with  the  fullest 
coiiiideiice  that  the  sun  always  had  revolved  and  would  always  con- 
tinue to  revolve  around  the  earth  once  in  every  tweuty-four  hours. 
One  of  the  deputation  of  distinguished  New  York  and  Philadelphia 
bankers  and  merchants  that  visited  this  city  for  the  purpose  of  sub- 
mitting arguments  and  protests  against  the  passage  of  a  bill  remon- 
etizing  silver  energetically  insisted,  in  a  speech  before  the  Finance 
Committee  of  this  body,  that  silver  was  an  until  commodity  on  which 
to  confer  the  monetary  function  On  account  of  its  eccentric  tendency 


to  fluctuations  in  value;  that  those  fluctuations  hart  been  constantly 
occurring  and  hart  within  a  few  years  covered  a  range  of  more  than 
20  per  cent.,  wliile  on  the  other  hand  gold  hart  shown  the  most  stub- 
born  Immobility,  not  having  changed  in  value  more  than  one-fourth  of 
1  per  cent,  in  thirty  years.  Upon  being  asked  what  standard  he  had 
used  in  measuring  the  two  metals  respectively  in  ascertaining  that 
one  of  them  fluctuated  so  largely  and  the  other  so  slightly,  he  an- 
swered I  hat  he  treated  them  alike,  that  he  referred  them  to  the  same 
measure,  gold. 

In  other  words,  he  sought  to  demonstrate  the  invariability  of  the 
value  of  gold,  and  consequently  its  superior  fitness  for  money,  by  the 
astounding  historical  fact  that  the  fluctuations  in  value  between  one 
ounce  of  gold  and  another  had  not  been  more  than  one-fourth  of  1 
per  cent,  in  thirty  years.  Western  financiers  may  not  be  able  to  see 
clearly  how  gold  measured  by  itself  could  in  eons  of  ages  fluctuate 
even  as  much  as  one-fourth  of  1  per  cent;  and  in  their  simplicity  I 
am  sure  they  will  not  doubt  that  measured  in  that  way  it  will  con- 
tinue for  more  than  thirty  years  to  come  as  changeless  as  the  events 
of  the  past.  They  may,  however,  be  dishonest  and  reckless  enough 
to  assert  and  maintain  that  had  silver  been  used  as  the  standard  of 
comparison  gold  instead  of  silver  would  have  seemed  to  be  the  fluc- 
tuating metal,  while  the  value  of  silver  would  have  seemed  to  re- 
main immovable. 

The  idea  that  gold  is  the  unmoving,  nnvarying  center  of  value, 
around  which  all  other  values  revolve  in  eccentric,  irregular  orbits,  is 
expressed  in  a  letter  from  Mr.  Royal  Phelps,  a  distinguished  New 
York  merchant,  to  the  United  States  monetary  commission,  in  the 
following  extraordinary  statement : 

Gold  never  rises  or  falls;  it  is  now  the  sole  and  universal  standard  of  valne. 
Everything  else  which  is  exchanged  or  traded  for  rises  or  falls  in  accordance  with 
the  abundance  or  scarcity  of  this  one  niotal. 

Literally  translated,  this  language  conveys  the  idea  that,  while  all 
other  things  may  rise  or  fall  in  valne  relatively  to  gold,  gold  itself, 
rising  superior  to  the  economic  laws  that  regulate  and  govern  values, 
remains  unchanged  in  its  relations  and  unmoved  in  value. 

The  present  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  in  a  public  speech  notlong 
since  delivered,  referred  to  the  value  of  gold  as  being  "  as  fixed  as 
the  sun." 

In  one  section  of  this  country  no  other  doctrine  is  promulgated. 
An  influential  school  of  political  economists  dogmatically  asserts 
that  it  is  of  no  consequence  that  Germany  has  made  a  new  and  large 
demand  tor  gold  and  that  the  United  States  is  now  making  another 
and  still  larger  demand  for  it,  and  that  the  same  thing  is  being  done 
by  other  countries  that  have  demonetized  silver;  and  that  it  imports 
nothing  that  the  yield  of  gold  is  diminishing  year  by  year. 

This  school  shuts  iiseyes  to  theflood  of  light  that  facts  and  philos- 
ophy are  shedding  all  around  it  and  stubbornly  iusists  that  the  laws 
which  govern  and  regulate  all  other  values  are  suspended  as  to  gold, 
and  that  gold  never  rises  and  falls,  but  is  as  "  fixed  as  the  sun."  So 
did  not  teach  John  Locke  when  he  said  nearly  two  centuries  ago : 

If  you  increase  or  Lessen  tin'  quantity  of  money  current  in  traffic,  in  anyplace, 
then  the  alteration  of  value  is  in  the  money. 

And,  again : 

Money  being  looked  upon  as  the  standing  measure  of  other  commodities,  men 

consider  and  speak  df  it  still  as  if  it  were  a  standing  measure,  though  when  it  has 
varied  its  quantity  it  is  plain  it  is  not,. 

Aud  so  have  taught  all  the  economists  since  Locke's  time,  until  new 


and  strange  doctrines  were  found  to  be  necessary  to  justify  the  strik- 
ing down  of  one  of  the  two  money  metals  of  the  world. 

The  rise  or  fall  in  the  absolute  value  of  gold  and  silver,  respectively, 
cannot  be  determined  by  a  comparison  of  their  values  relatively  to 
each  other.  That  can  only  be  determined  by  a  comparison  between 
their  present  and  previous  relations  to  all  other  things  in  exchange 
by  a  comparison  of  their  present  with  their  previous  purchasing 
power  over  land,  labor,  and  commodities.  A  decrease  of  general 
prices  signifies  a  rise  in  the  value  of  money,  and  an  increase  signifies 
a  fall. 

The  same  rule  applies  to  any  one  single  commodity,  to  the  value  of 
which  the  values  of  all  other  things  are  referred.  This  test  by  which 
changes  in  the  value  of  money  are  detected  is  not,  by  reason  of  the 
incompleteness  of  statistics  and  of  the  difficulty  of  ascertaining  the 
precise  weight  of  all  the  disturbing  circumstances  surrounding  the 
case,  as  exact  as  the  tests  by  which  weights,  measures,  and  distances 
are  determined.  Money  is  the  measure  of  the  value  of  all  other 
things,  but  cannot  be  the  measure  of  itself.  Its  value  is  determined 
not  by  the  price  of  one  thing  or  many  things,  but  by  the  average  price 
of  all  things,  by  the  general  relations  which  it  bears  in  exchange. 

If  the  value  of  all  other  things  is  measured  by  money  and  expressed 
in  the  units  of  money  through  the  medium  of  price,  it  follows  that 
the  value  of  money  can  only  be  measured  by  all  other  things  and 
must  be  expressed  in  the  units  of  property  and  services.  Thus  if  a 
bushel  of  wheat  or  a  yard  of  silk  or  a  day's  labor  is  worth  a  dollar, 
these  three  things  only  being  considered,  the  value  of  a  dollar  would 
be  a  bushel  of  wheat,  a  yard  of  silk,  or  a  day's  labor.  If  a  cup  meas- 
ures a  quart  of  liquid,  the  quart  of  liquid  determines  the  capacity 
of  the  cup.  If  money  measures  all  things,  it  is  plain  that  all  things 
measure  money,  and  that  to  determine  whether  money  has  risen  or 
fallen,  during  any  given  period,  it  becomes  necessary  to  ascertain 
whether  the  quantities  of  all  other  things,  on  the  average,  offered 
in  exchange  for  it  are  greater  or  less  at  the  commencement  and  end 
of  such  period.  This  plain  rule  demonstrates  how  unreliable  a  meas- 
ure gold  aloue  would  be  of  the  value  of  silver.  Men  are  so  accus- 
tomed, however,  to  refer  the  value  of  everything  to  money  that  they 
insensibly  think  and  speak  of  it  as  if  its  value  were  invariablejust 
as  they  think  and  speak  of  the  sun  rising  and  setting,  and  of  the  earth 
as  fixed,  though  they  know  upon  reflection  that  such  is  not  the  fact. 

It  is  true  that  there  may  be  a  diversity  of  methods  of  determining 
what  the  average  range  of  current  prices  is,  and  what  it  may  have 
been  at  some  anterior  period.  Practically,  however,  unless  the  change 
in  prices  has  been  very  slight,  there  can  be  no  difficulty  in  determin- 
ing whether  they  have  generally  fallen  or  risen.  While  there  have 
been  unimportant  differences  as  to  the  extent  of  the  fall  which  oc- 
curred in  the  value  of  metallic  money  after  the  discovery  of  America, 
the  fact  that  a  fall  in  its  value  did  take  place  at  that  period  has 
never  been  disputed,  nor  has  it  ever  been  disputed  that  money  rose 
in  value  during  the  first  half  of  this  century,  nor  that  it  again  fell 
after  the  opening  of  the  mines  of  California  and  Australia.  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  affirm  that  an  examination  of  all  the  facts  bearing  upon 
the  case,  a  few  of  which  I  propose  to  refer  to,  will  demonstrate  that 
gold  again  began  to  rise  about  ten  years  ago,  and  especially  about 
five  years  ago,  as  measured  by  commodities,  land,  and  la';  or,  and  that 
its  rise  is  still  unchecked  ;  and  that  this  last  rise  of  golt,  us  so  meas- 
ured, has  been  so  greatly  in  excess  of  its  rise  as  compared  with  silver 
as  to  show  that  silver  has  not  fallen  in  value:  or,  in  other  words, 
that  the  average  fall  in  the  gold  price  of  commodities  has  been  so 


nduch  greater  than  the  fall  in  the  gold  price  of  silvi  :•  as  to  make  the 
conclusion  irresistible  that  silver  Instead  of  having  depreciated  in 

value  during  the  la»st.  few  years  has  actually  apj  '.  though  not 

to  the  .same  extent  as  gold. 

The  resolution  of  the  German  Empire  to  substitute  a  gold  Eoi 
ver  standard  was  adopted  December  4,  1871,  and  although  the  Ger- 
man law  regulating  all  the  details  of  the  substitution  was  not  passed 
until  1873,  the  new  gold  coinage  was  commenced  at  once.  By  the 
end  of  1872  this  coinage  had  amounted  to  twenty-one  millions  ster- 
ling or  more  than  $100,1)00,000.  (See  London  Economist  of  March 
15,  1873.)  This  was  a  serious  drain  upon  the  gold  markets  of  the 
world,  and  immediately  teuded  to  produce  a  fall  in  prices  which  was 
temporarily  checked  by  corresponding  extensions  of  credit.  The 
effect  of  the  German  movement,  which  is  still  a  continuing  one,  upon 
the  value  of  gold  and,  consequently,  upon  gold  prices,  is  generally 
well  known,  but  a  careful  examination  and  comparison  of  market 
reports  and  prices-current  since  then,  especially  in  gold-standard 
countries,  will  present  the  facts  of  the  case  in  a  more  precise  and 
definite  form. 

The  New  York  Public  of  May  IS,  187G,  published  elaborate  tables 
of  the  wholesale  prices  in  New  York  City  of  the  principal  articles  of 
commerce,  foreign  and  domestic,  as  they  stood  on  the  1st  day  of  May 
m  various  years,  and  coveriug  all  the  years  from  1872  to  1876,  both 
inclusive.  As  that  city  is  the  chief  center  of  the  import  and  export 
trade  of  the  United  States,  and  as  communication  with  it  from  all 
parts  of  the  country  is  unsurpassed  in  cheapness  aud  convenience,  the 
wholesale  prices  of  any  locality  must  substantially  correspond  with 
those  in  New  York.  As  is  well  known,  there  is  a  diversity  of  opinion 
as  to  the  true  mode  of  deducing  the  average  of  prices  from  tables  of 
prices  of  a  large  number  of  articles  at  anyone  period  so  as  to  equalize 
surrounding  conditions  and  make  a  satisfactory  comparison  with  the 
average  of  prices  of  some  other  period. 

The  method  actually  adopted  by  The  Public  was  to  take  quantities 
of  different  articles,  proportioned  to  the  relative  quantities  produced 
or  purchased  in  this  country,  and  to  compare  the  aggregate  cost  of  such 
quantities  in  different  years,  the  quantities  calculated  being  of  course 
exactly  the  same  in  each  of  the  years  compared.  This  method  of 
deducing  an  average  of  prices  has  the  indorsement  of  recognized  au- 
thorities in  this  country  aud  in  Europe.  The  tables  furnished  by  The 
Public  show  that  the  same  quantities  of  breadstuff's,  cotton,  coal,  iron, 
leather,  tobacco,  wool,  butter  and  cheese,  sugar  and  molasses,  provis- 
ions, coffee  and  tea,  which  could  have. been  bought  at  wholesale  in 
New  York  on  May  1,  1872,  for  $85,  could  be  bought  on  May  1,  1870, 
for  $69.  This  shows  a  fall  in  the  average  price  of  the  articles  named, 
between  those  dates  of  about  10  per  cent.  These  were  currency 
prices  at  both  dates,  but  as  the  premium  on  gold  was  almost  exactly 
the  same  at  the  two  dates,  the  fall  in  gold  prices  could  not  vary  much 
from  the  fall  in  currency  prices,  and  was  in  fact  a  little  greater,  as 
the  premium  on  gold  was  three-eighths  of  1  per  cent,  more  in  May, 
1872,  than  it  was  in  1876. 

The  London  Economist,  commenting,  September  23,  1-76,  on  the 
tables  of  The  Public,  said : 

According  to  these  figures,  $<i9  would  go  as  far  in  1876  as  |85  in  1878,  and  Lu  the 
opinion  of  most  people  would  go  much  further. 

The  London  Economist  has  never  estimated  the  average  decline  in 
the  wholesale  prices  of  merchandise  in  England  between  LH72-'73  and 
l(-?t)-'7T  at  less  than  "20  per  cent. 


10 


The  Economist  maintains  in  respect  to  British  exports  that  the 
decline  in  their  aggregate  values  is  the  accurate  measure  of  the 
decline  in  their  prices,  and  that  no  reduction  in  the  quantity  of  ex- 
ports, taken  together,  is  shown.  Thus  on  the  10th  of  Fehruary,  1877, 
this  journal  said : 

The  exports  possess  the  characteristics  we  have  for  many  months  past  endeav- 
ored to  bring  out,  that  the  diminution  in  the  quantities  of  some  of  the  chief 
articles  exported  is  trifling  as  compared  with  the  diminution  of  their  values.  In 
several  other  cases  there  is  a  real  and  considerable  increase  in  the  quantities. 
Since  1872  there  lias  been  a  gradual  decrease  in  their  value  month  by  month.  In 
that  year  the  average  monthly  export  was  £21,355,000.  In  1873  it  was  £21,264,000. 
In  1874  it  was  £19,903,000.  In  1875,  £18,025,000,  and  during  last  year  the  gradual 
fall  was  continued. 

The  tables  of  The  Economist  show  that  the  average  monthly  export 
for  1876  was  £16,714,000.  The  prices  of  iron  and  coal  Lave  fallen 
very  much  more  than  20  per  cent.,  and  very  much  more  than  the 
average  fall  in  the  prices  of  other  commodities,  in  Great  Britain  since 
1872.  From  a  comparison  of  the  quantities  and  values  exported,  as 
given  in  the  hoard  of  trade  returns,  the  following  are  shown  to  havo 
been  the  average  prices  per  ton  during  the  year  1673  and  the  first  six 
months  of  1877,  respectively : 


First  six 
Commodities.  1873.        montbs  of 

1877. 


Iron  and  steel,  raw 

Pig  and  puddled  iron 

Total  iron  and  steel,  raw  and  manufactured 
Coal  


}41  23 

14  19 
42  34 
2  57 


It  appears  from  these  returns  that  during  1873  the  total  export  of 
iron  and  steel,  raw  and  manufactured,  amounted  to  2,957,813  tons,  at 
a  total  valuation  of  £37,731,239,  while  during  the  hrst  six  months 
of  1877  it  was  1,118,183  tons,  at  a  valuation  of  £9,792,326.  The  ex- 
port of  coals  during  1873  was  12,617.566  tons,  at  a  total  valuation  of 
£13,188,511,  while  during  the  first  six  months  of  1877  it  was  7,344,883 
tons,  at  a  total  valuation  of  £3,773,920. 

In  order  to  bring  down  this  record  of  falling  prices  in  England  to 
the  latest  accessible  dates,  I  will  read  the  following  from  an  article 
on  "The  course  of  prices  of  commodities"  in  1677,  to  be  found  in  the 
London  Economist  of  January  5,  1878  : 

It  was  to  the  end  of  July,  1877,  that  we  carried  our  record  of  weekly  prices, 
when  last  writing  upon  the  'subject.  In  nearly  every  article  upon  our  list,  except 
wheat  and  saltpeter,  there  had  been  a  decline  of  market  value.  Week  by  week 
during  the  last  five  months  of  the  year  now  closed  there  has  been  so  general  a  de- 
cline of  prices  that  it  is  scarcely  needful  to  particularize.  Iron,  coal,  and  eoileo 
are,  however,  all  down,  tin  showing  exceptional  steadiness,  the  group  of  articles 
of  food  showing  a  general  decline.  Beef  has  fallen  since  the  summer,  and  the 
decline  iu  coffee,  together  with  the  falling  off  in  excise  returns,  reminds  us  that 
the  laboring  mass  of  the  population  has  now  less  than  of  late  to  spend  upon  neces- 
sities and  comforts  of  life. 

The  close  of  the  year  affords  a  good  opportunity  for  pointing  with  effect  to  the 
steady,  continuous," and  serious  decline  which  bas  affected  th.'  markets  for  the  com- 
modities in  which  thechief  tradeof  England  consists.  Although  the  fall  in  prices 
has  been  long  continued  and  severe  no  one  can  pretend  to  say  that  the  depressed 
period  is  at  an  end  and  that  prices  must  soon  tend  to  recover. 

The  following  is  a  statement  of  the  comparat  ivc  prices  in  London 


11 


at  the  close  of  the  years  1873  and  1877  of  articles  selected  for  the 
purpose  hy  the  London  Economist : 


Articles. 


Prices  at 
the  close 

Prices  at 
the  close 

Fall  in 

of  1873. 

of  1877. 

£  8.  d. 

£  s. 

d. 

Percent* 

3    18 

2  11 

9 

16.1 

2  12  0 

2    6 

0 

11.5 

4  2 

2 

10 

32. 

5  5 

5 

0 

7.7 

5    0  0 

2  11 

6 

48.5 

K5    0  0 

66    0 

0 

20.5 

115    0  0 

66    0 

0 

42.6 

8 

6-ft 

19.6 

19  15  0 

15  10 

0 

21.6 

18  0 

14 

6 

19.5 

5    T  0 

4     4 

9 

20.- 

7* 

4| 

3c.  3 

I. — Native  products  : 

Wheat.  Gazette  average  quarter 

Floor,  town  made 

Href,  inferior;  per  stone 

Beef,  prime,  per  stone 

TJ. — Raw  materials : 

Scotch  pig-iron,  per  ton , 

Copper,  Chili,  per  ton 

Tin,  Straits,  per  tun 

Cui  tun,  middling  Upland,  per  pound  .. 
"Wool,  Southdown,  per  pack 

III. — Tropical  products : 
Snjtar,  Muscovado,  per  hundred-weight 

Coffee,  Ceylon,  per  hundred-weight 

Pepper,  Xatal,  per  pound , 


The  average  fall  In  price  of  the  above  articles,  taking  them  numer- 
ically and  without  reference  to  their  relative  quantities,  is  24.9  per 
cent.  During  the  same  time  the  gold  price  of  an  ounce  of  silver  in 
London  fell  from  57-Jd.  to  53ftf.,  heing  a  fall  of  7.11  per  cent.  The 
silver  prices,  therefore,  of  the  commodities  named  fell  17.79  per  cent. 
The  period  covered  hy  this  comparison  is  somewhat  different  from 
that  covered  hy  the  tables  of  the  New  York  Public  and  the  articles 
selected  for  comparison  are  somewhat  different.  Both  comparisons, 
however,  attest  the  same  general  fact  that  silver  has  recently  risen 
rather  than  fallen  in  its  exchangeable  value. 

As  the  wholesale  prices  of  articles  of  commerce  in  all  gold-stand- 
ard countries  rise  and  fall  in  substantial  correspondence  with  their 
rise  and  fall  in  Great  Britain,  it  is  thus  conclusively  estahlished  that 
the  purchasing  power  of  gold  over  commodities  generally  has  increased 
in  a  very  much  greater  ratio  since  1872  than  it  has  over  silver  bull- 
ion. I  have  not  deemed  it  necessary  to  burden  the  record,  as  I  might 
easily  do,  with  extracts  from  economical  and  miscellaneous  publica- 
tions in  every  portion  of  every  land  giving  accounts  of  a  stagnation 
of  industry  and  commerce  and  a  fall  in  gold  prices  as  great  if  not 
greater  than  has  been  shown  to  have  taken  place  in  Great  Britain, 
and  with  forebodings  for  the  future  even  more  gloomy  than  those  of 
the  London  Economist.  This  distress,  felt  everywhere,  presses  with 
the  most  intense  severity  upon  the  gold-standard  countries. 

The  only  great  country  which  exhibits  any  degree  of  prosperity  is 
France,  which  maintains  a  silver  circulation  of  $300,000,000,  on  a  val- 
uation of  silver  equal  to  400,  instead  of  412&,  grains  to  the  dollar,  as 
proposed  in  the  bill  under  consideration.  As  a  proof  and  illustration 
of  this  is  the  fact,  stated  by  the  Moniteur  des  Inte"rets  Mat6riels  of 
Brussels,  the  highest  authority  on  such  subjects,  that  the  total  new 
investments  in  all  Europe  in  industrial  undertakings,  including  rail- 
roads, during  the  year  1877  was  $330,000,000,  of  which  $285,000,000 
was  invested  in  France  alone.  And  even  in  France  there  are  now 
unmistakable  premonitions  of  approaching  stagnation  in  trade  and 
industry,  caused  doubtless  by  the  unwise  suspension  for  a  year  and  ;i 
half  of  the  coinage  of  silver.     The  invasion  of  "  hard  times,"  which 


12 

lias  scarcely  yet  reached  the  shores  of  France,  can  be  successfully  met 
and  resisted  only  by  a  return  without  reserve  to  its  old  policy  of  un- 
restricted coinage  of  silver. 

It  is  a  proposition  which  cannot,  be  overthrown  by  facts  and  figures, 
that  the  fall  in  silver  relatively  to  gold  since  1872  has  never  been  . 
great  as  has  been  the  fall  in  the  gold  price  of  commodities  except  on 
one  single  day,  July  8,  1876,  which  was  a  Black  Friday  in  the  London 
silver  market,  when  in  the  language  of  a  circular  issued  by  Pixley  & 
Abell,  London  bullion  brokers,  there  was  an  "  exceptional  sale  at  40f 
pence"  in  gold  per  ounce.  The  general  range  of  the  recent  so-called 
depreciation  of  silver  as  measured  in  gold  has  been  about  10  per  cent., 
whereas  the  gold  prices  of  the  general  range  of  commodities  has  fallen 
at  least  20  per  cent.  Unless  the  facts  cited  as  to  the  condition  of  the 
markets  can  be  overthrown,  the  conclusion  cannot  be  avoided  that  the 
real  value  of  silver,  which  is  measured  by  its  purchasing  or  exchange- 
able power,  instead  of  having  fallen  has  to  a  very  considerable  degree 
risen  within  the  last  five  years. 

The  conclusion  that  silver  has  not  fallen  in  value  is  further  fortified 
by  the  fact,  of  which  the  proofs  are  decisive,  that  in  India,  contain- 
ing an  industrious  population  of  237,000,000,  with  silver  as  their  sole 
standard,  there  has  been  a  general  fall  rather  than  a  rise  in  the  prices 
of  commodities,  including  both  imports  and  exports.  Nor  have  silver 
prices  risen  in  any  other  portion  of  Asia.  A.  A.  Low,  a  leading  mer- 
chant of  New  York,  engaged  in  the  China  trade,  testified  before  the 
United  States  monetary  commission  to  the  fact,  which  is  otherwise 
well  established,  that  since  l$72-'73  there  has  been  a  fall  in  the  silver 
price  of  tea,  the  principal  export  of  China.  It  is  true  that  during  a 
portion  of  that  time  there  was  a  rise  in  the  silver  price  of  raw  silk,  a 
less  important  but  still  not  unimportant  article  of  export  from  China. 
This  rise,  however,  is  well  known  to  have  been  attributable  to  the 
failure  of  the  silk  crop  of  Italy  and  France.  Silk  has  since  then  very 
materially  fallen  in  price,  and  its  tendency  is  still  downward.  As  to 
imports  in  China  from  Europe,  their  prices  have  necessarily  fallen  in 
the  same  proportion  as  in  India.  In  those  two  markets  having  the 
same  money  standard  theremust  always  be  asubstantial  correspond- 
ence in  the  prices  of  the  same  articles. 

In  respect  to  the  silver  prices  of  the  exports  of  India,  the  Ui 
States  monetary  commission  quote  from  a  letter  (New  York  Evening 
Post,  October  26,  1876)  from  J.  S.Moore,  who  had  long  been  engaged 
in  the  India  trade  and  who  has  never  ceased  to  take  an  interest  in 
its  condition,  and  who  has  carefully  observed  and  collated  the  facts 
relating  to  it.     In  this  letter  Mr.  Moore  states,  among  other  things  : 

Indian  productions  are  at  present  at  their  lowest  ebb  as  compared  during  fifteen 
years. 

The  monetary  commission  also  note  the  fact  that  at  a  meeting  in 
London  in  September,  1876,  of  the  stockholders  in  the  Oriental  Bank, 
whose  principal  business  connection  is  with  the  India  trade,  the  pres- 
ident said  that  with  few  exceptions  India  products  were  so  low  that 
even  a  general  war  could  not  make  them  worse.  The  commission 
also  quote  the  following  as  the  reported  summary  of  the  conclusions 
announced  by  the  governor  and  council  of  India  in  a  minute  adopted 
September  22,  1876,  on  the  subject  of  silver,  and  as  an  answer  to  the 
petition  of  the  Bombay  Chamber  of  Commerce  that  the  coinage  of  the 
silver  rupees  should  be  limited : 

First.  Gold  has  riser  in  valtn  since  March,  1873,  and  especially  since  last  De- 
cember. 


I  I 

tmpared  with 
counu  either  in  Louden  or  in  India  daring  tin-  Bame  period. 

Nearly  every^adingjournal,  financial  and  otherwise,  indorsed  with 
scarcely  any  reservation  the  reasoning  and  conclusi  gover- 

nor and  council. 

The  full  text  of  the  minute,  of  September  22,  1876,  lias  now^been 
received,  together  with  a  note  addressed  by  the  governoi 
the  home  go^  ernment,  bearing  date  the  9th  of  February,  1-T7.   From 
tiie  full  text  at  this  iniuute  I  extract  the  following: 

The  recent  Ohange  hi  the  value  of  silver  measured  in  gold  may  be  due  to  changes 
>>t  one  metal  or  the  other,  or  both.     Before  a  tit  remedy  can  be  applied  it  i»  essen- 
ain  exactly  what  lias  happened,  whether  gold  has  risen  or  silver  fallen, 
and  i">\\  maoh  the  value  of  either  metal  has  changed.    It  cannot  beassnm 

out  decisive  proof  that  the  divergence  of  the  two  metals  is  due  wholly  or  even 
ehiellv  to  the  call  in  the  value  of  silver. 

The  long  continuous  equilibrium  between  the  value  of  gold  and  that  of  silver  is 
due  to  the  two  metals  having  shared,  without  material  change  of  conditions,  the 
only  meat  field  for  the  employment  of  either  of  them.  i.  e.  the  supply  of  legal-tender 
metallic,  money.  This  equilibrium  has  been  disturbed  by  the  rapid  sup.  - 
of  silver  by  gold  in  Europe  and  America  as  the  standard  of  value,  and,  therefore, 
as  the  material  of  legal-tender  metallic  money.  This  supersession  is  calculated 
a  priori  t.i  raise  the  value  of  gold  no  less  than  to  lower  the  value  of  silver. 

The  prices  of  commodities  and  precious  metals  in  London  and  India  witness  to 
a  considerable  rise  in  the  value  of  gold  since  March,  ls73,  and  especially  since  De- 
cember. i-7."i.  and  do  not  snow  any  fall  in  the  value  of  silver  measured  in  commo- 
dities other  than  sold. 

On  the  2d  of  Fehruary,  1877,  the  governor  of  India  telegraphed  to 
the  home  government  as  follows : 

Prices  in  India  do  not  as  yet  show  any  fall  in  the  value  of  silver. 

And  on  the  9th  of  February,  1877,  as  already  stated,  the  governor 
addressed  a  note  to  the  home  government  on  the  same  subject.  This 
note  is  accompanied  by  tables  of  the  prices  iu  silver  in  Bombay  and 
Calcutta,  of  the  leading  articles  both  of  import  and  export,  covering 
the  entire  year  1873  and  coming  down  to  February,  1877.  Upon 
these  tables  he  observes  in  respect  to  imports  "  that  the  silver  prices  of 
imported  goods  in  India  hare  hot  risen,  and  the  circumstances  would  ap- 
pear to  have  been  unfavorable  to  importt  rs."  And  in  respect  to  exports 
he  observes  that  u  upon  the  whole  these  tables  do  not  appear  to  in- 
dicate any  decrease  in  the  value  of  silver.  ' 

Of  the  imports  at  Calcutta  the  only  article  which  shows  a  rise  of 
price  is  spelter,  (zinc;)  to  that  article  are  added  in  the  Bombay  ta- 
bles Chinese  silk  and  coffees  from  Mocha  and  Malabar.  The  fall  in 
the  prices  in  imports  at  both  cities  has  been  general,  and  in  the  lead- 
ing articles  it  has  been  great  between  1873  and  the  beginning  of 
1377.  Thus  in  gray  shirtings  it  is  15  per  cent,  at  Bombay  "and  18  per 
cent,  in  Calcutta,  and  in  iron  it  is  about  double  this. 

I  need  scarcely  refer  to  the  condition  of  the  iron  trade  of  this  country. 
It  is  graphically  set  forth  in  the  columns  of  the  Philadelphia  Bulletin 
of  the  Irou  and  Steel  Association  of  December  26,  1877.  The  prices 
given  are  currency  prices,  but  after  alloAving  for  the  fall  in  the  gold 
premium,  a  reduction  of  gold  prices  during  the  year  1877  is  still  shown, 
although  the  enormous  reductions  of  price  already  reached  in  187 <j  had 
created  a  general  belief  that  they  could  not  by  possibility  go  any  lower. 
The  Bulletin  says : 

The  following  table,  which  we  have  compiled  from  the  remarkablv  accurate 
report*  of  Thomas  Hobson,  the  Philadelphia  correspondent  of  the  Xew  York  Iron 


14 


Ago,  shows  the  average  range  of  prices  of  four  leading  iron  and  steel  products 
during  the  year : 


Months. 

Pig-iron  in    |  Refined  bar 
Philadel  -        in  Philadel- 
phia,          j    phia. 

Steel  rails  at 
works. 

Ordinary 
iron    mils 
at  works. 

$•20  75                148  72 
20  00                  47  60 
20  00                  47  04 
19  50  ,                44  80 
19  00  '.                44  80 
18  75                  44  80 
18  25                  44  60 
18  00  '               44  80 
18  25  :                44  80 
18  511                  44  80 
18  00  i               44  80 
18  00                  44  80 

$49  00 

$34  50 

49  00                    33  75 

49  00  1                  33  00 

49  00 
47  25 
46  50 
45  25 
44  75 
44  00 
42  25 
40  50 
40  50 

33  00 

33  00 

33  00 

33  00 

32  75 

September 

31  CO 

30  50 

31  00 

32  00 

18  92  j               45  55 

45  56 

32  54 

The  figures  above  given  show  a  steady  decline  in  the  price  of  pig-iron  from  $20.75 
in  January  to  f  18  in  August,  when  the  decline  may  be  said  to  have  been  perma- 
nently arrested,  as  prices  have  since  remained  practically  stationary,  with  a  hard- 
ening tendency.  In  bar  iron  the  price  has  fallen  from  $48.72  for  best  refined  in 
January  to  $44.80  for  the  same  quality  in  December.  Steel  rails  have  fallen  from 
$49  at  the  works  in  January  to  $40.50  in  December.  Iron  rails  of  ordinary  quality 
have  fallen  from  $34.50  in  Januarv  to  $32  in  December.  All  these  are  the  lowest 
prices  ever  quoted  in  this  country,  if  we  except  the  price  of  pig-iron  in  colonial 
days.  In  later  days,  prior  to  1877,  the  lowest  average  yearly  price  of  No.  1  anthra- 
cite foundery  pig-iron  was  in  1661,  the  first  year  of  the  war,  when  it  was  $20.25,  the 
lowest  averaae  monthly  price  touched  during  the  year  being  $18.62£  in  October. 
The  lowest  monthly  average  price  in  1877  was  in  Aiuust,  November,  and  Decem- 
ber, when  it  was  $18  ;  the  average  for  the  year  was  $18.92.  Charcoal  pig-iron  has 
never  been  so  low  as  anthracite.  Previous  to  the  present  era  of  low  prices,  the 
lowest  point  touched  in  the  price  of  best  refined  bar  iron  was  $52.50  per  gross  ton 
from  March  to  July,  1852;  and  the  lowest  average  reached  in  any  year  was  $54.66 
in  1851.  In  April,  1877,  best  refined  bar  iron  fell  to  $44.60  a  ton,  and  at  this  price  it 
remained  to  the  close  of  the  year.  The  average  price  for  the  year  was  $45.55.  Steel 
rails  were  first  made  on  order  in  this  country  in  1867,  and  in  January,  1868,  they 
were  sold  at  $165.  In  December,  1877,  contracts  for  steel  rails  were  made  at  $40, 
and  the  average  price  for  the  month  was  only  $40.50.  The  average  price  for  the 
year  was  $45.58.  Previous  to  the  present  period  of  low  prices  the  lowest  point 
touched  in  the  price  of  iron  rails  was  $36.50  a  ton  in  November  and  December,  1861, 
and  in  January  and  February.  1862 ;  and  the  lowest  average  reached  in  any  year 
was  $41.75  in  1862.  In  October,  1677,  iron  rails  fell  to  $30.50,  and  the  average  price 
for  the  year  was  $32.54. 

The  foregoing  comparisons  exhibit  the  depressed  condition  of  the  American  iron 
trade  at  the  close  of  1877  in  a  liffht  that  requires  little  comment.  The  low  wages, 
the  small  profits  or  no  profits  at  all,  the  bankruptcies,  the  pinching,  the  anxiety, 
and  the  weariness  of  spirit  which  have  accompanied  the  great  fall  in  prices  can 
easily  be  surmised. 

The  closing  year  has  been  one  of  extreme  discouragement  to  American  iron- 
masters and  their  workmen. 

The  depression  in  nearly  every  industry  in  this  country  has  heen 
most  severe,  although  in  iron  it  may  be  exceptionally  great.  Volumes 
might  be  filled  with  the  evidences  of  falling  markets  and  of  the  uni- 
versality of  the  business  disasters  since  18?:i.- 

No  answer  is  made  to  these  exhibitions  of  the  fall  of  general  prices 
since  1872-73  except  the  shallow  and  deceptive  one  of  selecting  here 
and  there  some  isolated  article  which  may  have  risen  in  price  during 
that  period  from  peculiar  causes,  or  some  isolated  article  which  may 
have  risen  in  price  during  apart  of  that  period,  such  as  wheat  during 
the  first  part  of  1877,  from  the  breaking  out  of  the  Russo-Turkish 
war,  or  the  rise  in  raw  silk,  which  continued  for  a  short  time  after  the 
e  of  crops  in  leading  silk-prodncing  countries.     Few  will  be 


15 

deceived  by  answers  of  tlmt  kind,  exoepl  those  who  wish  to  be  de- 
ceived.   The  broad  general  fact,  that  within  five  years  the 
prices  of  commodities  have  fallen  more  than  baa  the  gold  price  oJ 

-silver  dining  the  same  period  is  written  all  over  the  market  quota- 
tions of  every  part  of  the  world  and  is  known  to  everybody  in  the 
current  experience  of  life. 

The  Public,  from  whose  tables  I  have  quoted,  is  now  behind  none  of 
the  New  York  newspapers  in  the  glibness  and  flippancy  which  charac- 
terise a  majority  of  them  in  affirming  that  the  only  wise  and  honest 
thing  for  this  country  to  do  is  to  pay  its  debts,  national,  corporate, 
and  individual,  in  gold,  which  its  own  tables  of  prices  as  well  as  iis 
own  editorials,  which  I  shall  hereafter  quote,  show  has  been  enor- 
mously appreciated  by  depriving  silver  of  the  monetary  function  and 
by^devolvingnpon  gold  alone  the  functions  before  performed  by  both 
metals. 

The  Public  now  goes  as  far  as  those  who  go  farthest  in  denouncing 
as  a  swindling  scheme  the  proposition  to  restore  to  silver  the  func- 
tions of  which  it  was  shorn  by  legislation  foolishly  criminal,  or  crim- 
inally foolish,  and  in  the  denunciation  of  its  advocates  as  tl 
triyers  of  a  debased,  degraded,  and  depreciated  money,  and  as  idiots, 
swindlers,  and  lunatics.  And  I  may  here  remark  that  this  discussion 
has  signally  illustrated  the  long-known  fact  that  the  dernier ressortot 
the  supporters  of  a  bad  cause  is  always  to  supply  the  place  of  solid 
arguments  which  they  lack  with  ridicule,  vituperation,  and  abuse, 
which  are  always  as  cheap  as  they  are  abundant.  In  the  case  of  The 
Public  there  is  added  to  the  pique  of  a  defeated  casuist  the  zeal  of 
a  new  convert,  as  will  appear  from  the  following  short  extracts  from 
its  columns  in  ldTG  : 

[From  The  Fublle,  August  3,  1876.] 

Prices  of  commodities  generally  have  declined  in  all  lands  iu  which  gold  is  the 
measure  at  hast  as  much  as  SO  per  cent,  within  four  years.  The  purchasing  power 
of  silver  in  countries  where  that  metal  is  the  measure  has  not  materially  declined 
excepting  with  respect  to  gold.  This  phenomenon,  if  we  put  it  into  a  few  words, 
is  this,  that  gold  has  risen  120  per  cent,  in  purchasing  power,  while  silver  has  fallen 
but  Lttle,  if  any. 

[From  The  Public,  August  10, 1376-71 

Has  silver  fallen  in  value?  Thousands  assert  it.  Not  Oman  has  submitted  a 
single  proof.  *  *  *  Every  intelligent  man  understands  that  it  silver  sold  in 
1872  at  sixty  ponce  per  ounce  in  gold,  and  sells  now  at  fifty -one  pence,  that  change 
may  have  been  produced  either  by  a  decrease  of  15  per  cent,  iu  the  value  of  silver,  or 
by  a  corresponding  rise  in  the  value  of  gold.  *  *  *  Gold  will  buv  more  of  silver 
and  more  of  everything  else  than  it  would  in  \?~.i.  The  decline  in  silver  from  fifty- 
nine  and  a  quarter  ponce  in  1873  to  riitv-one  pence  in  1876  has  been  H  per  cent.  A  j 
we  have  repeatedly  shown,  the  decline  in  the  price  of  other  commodities  generally 
has  been  about  as  much  in  Other  countries  in  which  gold  is  the  standard,  and  con- 
siderably more  in  this  country,  where  prices  have  been  in  part  by  a  depreciated 
currency.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  proof  that  prices  id'  commodities  gener- 
ally have  changed  appreciably  in  those  countries  where  silver  is  the  measure  of 
value.  Gold  is  relatively  scarce  and  dear.  Prices  fall,  industries  are  prostrated. 
Silver  also  falls  in  countries  which  have  driven  it  from  use  as  .i  .aim- 

and  deprived  themselves  of  the  protection  which  that   use  would  give  in  such  a 

[From  The  Public.  September  28. 1876.1 
In  point  of  fact  there  is  a  ''corner"  in  gold,     its  price  iu  silver  and  its  purchas- 
ing power  rise  rapidly  in  the  western  world. 

And  yet  to-day,  when  the  corner  in  gold  is  a  closer  one  than  ii 
The  Public  echoes  and  re-echoes  what  is  with  a  few  honorable  excep- 
tions the  voice  of  the  New  York  press,  that  all  debts,  public  and  pri- 
vate, shall  be  paid  in  the  cornered  metal  in  unblushing  defiance  of 
both  the  letter  and  spirit  of  contracts. 

It  has  been  persistently  urged  that  if  silver  lias  not  yet  depreciated, 
its  tendencies  are  in  that  direction,  and  that  if  we  remonetize  it,  we 


16 

shall  be  overwhelmed  by  the  discarded,  refuse  stock  of  other  nations, 
and  that  this  country  will  be  cursed  with  a  fluctuating,  depreciated, 
unreliable,  and  worthless  money. 

Look  to  whatever  quarter  we  may  for  the  source  of  this  threatened 
flood,  it  cannot  be  found.  France  has  none  to  spare.  The  $300,000,000 
of  silver  which  she  has  is  all  urgently  needed  as  a  basis  for  her  paper 
issues.  She  can  only  discard  it  by  supplying  its  place  with  gold.  If 
she  enters  upon  that  experiment  now,  or  in  the  near  future,  it  would 
postpone  indefinitely  any  attempt  at  gold  resumption  in  this  country. 
Our  legislation  must  therefore  be  based  on  the  idea  that  France  must 
continue  her  present  money  system  indefinitely.  Reliable  informa- 
tion from  Germany  shows  that  the  disposable  stock  in  that  country 
does  not  now  exceed  $70,000,000,  and  the  London  Economist  estimates 
it  to  be  considerably  less.  This  amount  might  be  emptied  into  th^ee 
or  four  of  the  Western  States  without  producing  a  flutter  in  the 
financial  atmosphere.  England  has  not  now  and  never  keeps  any  con- 
siderable stock  of  silver  on  hand,  but  is  constantly  obliged,  in  order 
to  meet  the  demands  of  her  commerce  with  India,  to  telegraph  orders 
for  silver  on  San  Francisco. 

There  are  no  disposable  stocks  elsewhere  either  in  Europe  or  Amer- 
ica, and  silver  never  returns  from  the  eastern  world. 

Whenever  the  prediction  has  been  made  that  the  markets  were  to 
be  flooded  with  any  other  articles  than  silver,  such  as  cotton  or  wheat, 
it  has  generally  been  deemed  necessary,  if  the  object  was  to  affect  the 
prices,  production,  or  use  of  those  articles,  to  point  out  specifically  from 
what  quarter  of  the  globe  the  flood  might  be  expected. 

But  in  respect  to  silver,  there  has  been  a  beating  of  gongs  and  a 
universal  shout  of  warning  to  the  people  to  maintain  legislative 
dikes  against  the  incoming  floods  of  that  metal,  whose  sources  they 
have  been  unable  or  unwilling  to  point  out.  This  Chinese  system  of 
warfare  against  silver  has  proved  ineffectual,  because  upon  examina- 
tion the  masses  of  the  people  could  not  see  that  any  evil  would  result 
to  this  country  even  if  the  entire  stock  of  German  and  French  silver 
should  be  sent  here.  On  the  contrary,  the  people  believe  that  a  sil- 
ver flood  of  only  that  magnitude  could  result  in  no  injury  whatever, 
but  would  only  serve  to  revive  the  stagnant  industry  and  commerce 
of  the  country,  like  rain  upon  the  parched,  thirsty,  and  sun-cracked 
earth. 

As  no  dangerous  quantity  of  silver  existed  in  known  localities  the 
gold  worshipers  and  bondholders  have  been  obliged  to  cause  it  to 
be  invented  or  discovered,  and  in  this,  as  might  be  expected,  they 
have  not  failed.  The  discovery  was  promptly  made  about  a  year  ago 
by  a  reliable  newspaper  correspondent  in  the  distant  and  inaccessible 
mountain  ranges  of  Peru,  which  threatened,  upon  the  completion  of 
nearly  completed  tunnels,  to  pour  through  them  in  a  deluging  stream 
uncounted  thousands  of  millions  of  that  contaminated  and  contami- 
nating metal.  These  fabulous  deposits  were  wisely  located  in  such 
remote  regions  that  it  was  safe  to  affirm  almost  anything  in  respect 
to  them,  but  thus  far  they  have  stubbornly  refused  to  leave  their 
adamantine  sepulchers. 

The  stories  concerning  them  were  regarded  at  the  outset  as  absurd 
by  all  who  knew  anything  of  the  history  of  silver  mining,  and  they 
have  since  been  revamped  so  often  that  they  have  ceased  to  attract 
any  attention. 

The  Comstock  lode,  confessedly  one  of  the  greatest  mineral-bear- 
ing veins  ever  discovered  and  in  the  hands  of  the  most  vigorous, 
pushing,  energetic,  ingenious   and  enterprising  people,  has  yielded 


17 

less  than  $200,000,000  of  silver  since  its  discovery  tweut; 
Daring  fchat  time  exhaustive  explorations  liave  been  made  along  ita 
entire  length  to  a  depth  of  two  thousand  feet.  In  view  of  facts  like 
these  something  more  immediately  threatening  to  the  value  of  silver, 
aud  more  plausible  than  a  deluge  of  that,  metal  from  the  distant 
mountains  of  Peru,  was  needed  to  frighten  the  people  from  restoring 
their  ancient  money  standard. 

The  fundholders  of  the  world  who  deal  in  mortgages  on  past  and 
future  enterprises  instead  of  inaugurating  them,  and  who  are  exclu- 
sively engaged  in  the  improvement  of  the  value  of  debts,  and  never 
in  the  improvement  of  the  value  of  property,  fertile  in  expedients, 
have  been  equal  to  the  occasion.  They  have  developed  a  new  ami 
imminent  danger  described  in  a  startling  aud  bewildering  dispatch 
of  a  recent  date  to  their  organs  in  New  York,  which  I  read  : 

Recent  discoveries  of  chemists  and  metallurgists  in  the  science  of  cupellation 
have  been  so  important  that  some  of  them  claim  that  they  can  even  melt  up  sheet 
had  and  piping  in  ordinary  use  and  extract  a  sufficient  percentage  of  silver  to 
make  the  operation  largely  profitable,  and  arrangements  have,  already  been  made 
to  reopen  the  workings  of  many  abandoned  mines  of  poor  ores  under  the  new 
eupellatiug  processes  if  the  bill  should  pass. 

The  process  of  cupellation  applied  to  lead,  as  here  described,  might 
have  been  important  in  some  remote  ages  of  the  world,  but  it  is  now 
so  dwarfed  by  improved  and  more  scientific  applications  of  that  pro- 
cess as  to  be  of  little  consequence. 

Cupellation  applied  to  paper  in  18C9  extracted  fifteen  hundred 
millions  of  coin  out  of  paper-currency  bonds,  and  a  still  later  refine- 
ment of  the  process  seeks  to  transmute  seventeen  hundred  millions  of 
coin  into  gold. 

The  cupellators  of  18G9  made  a  clear  profit  of  $500,000,000  without 
investing  a  single  dollar  in  lead  or  in  any  metal  or  material  or  mine. 

The  ancient  alchemists  tried  to  transmute  base  metals  into  gold.  The 
cupellators  referred  to  in  the  dispatch  I  have  read  hope  to  extract 
silver  from  lead.  But  by  a  practical  application  of  their  process  the 
cupellators  of  1869  extracted  more  coin  out  of  paper  than  was  ever 
yielded  by  the  Comstock  lode  and  Potosi  combined.  No  talk  about 
a  process  of  cupellating  silver  out  of  lead  will  divert  the  people 
of  the  United  States,  who  have  suffered  so  deeply  by  the  double 
process  of  cupellating  coin  out  of  paper  and  gold  out  of  coin,  from 
ascertaining  the  exact  nature  of  the  operation.  It  may  be  that  when 
its  details  are  thoroughly  understood  the  process  may  be  reversed, 
aud  made  to  work  in  the  interest  of  the  masses  of  the  people.  When 
the  exact  nature  and  result  of  the  process  is  exposed  it  will  not  be 
surprising  if  the  name  of  cupellator  shall  become  as  odious  as  that 
of  inflationist  and  repudiator. 

I  have  so  far  considered  the  rise  in  the  value  of  gold  since  1872  as 
demonstrated  aud  measured  by  the  average  fall  in  the  prices  of  com- 
modities. But  the  rise  in  its  value,  as  shown  by  the  fall  in  the  prices 
of  land  and  labor,  has  been  vastly  greater  and  has  contributed  much 
more  powerfully  to  the  business  prostration  everywhere  prevailing. 
Land  and  labor  immeasurably  overshadow  in  magnitude  and  impor- 
tance the  aggregate  of  mere  merchandise  that  was  ever  in  existence 
at  any  given  period.  Land  in  all  civilized  countries  is  the  great  basis 
and  bulwark  of  credit,  and  a  general  or  considerable  fall  in  its  price 
has  never  failed  to  be  ruinous  to  every  commercial  and  industrial 
interest.  It  constitutes  a  great  if  not  a  major  portion  of  the  posses- 
sions of  mankind.  Cities  are  built  upon  it,  and  all  the  dwellings  and 
structure*  of  man.     All  the  permanent  works  of  utility  for  the  amel- 


J  8 

ioration  of  the  condition  ot  the  race  are  constructed  upon  and  become 
a  part  of  it. 

From  its  generous  breast  all  the  wants  of  man  must  be  supplied. 
Land,  togetber  with  all  the  permanent  structures  built  upon  it,  con- 
stitutes what  in  law  is  dignified  by  the  name  of  real  estate.  A  gen- 
eral fall  in  tbe  prices  of  real  estate  would  not  seem  to  be  possible 
unless  caused  by  an  absolute  appreciation  in  the  value  of  the  medium 
in  which  it  is  measured,  except  under  the  blows  of  great  national 
calamities,  or  except  under  the  influence  of  one  of  those  mysterious 
cycles  of  national  decadence  which  at  long  intervals  in  the  past  have 
frowned  darkly  now  upon  one  portion  and  again  upon  another  of  tho 
civilized  world. 

Adam  Smith,  if  not  the  founder  of  the  modern  science  of  political 
economy,  was  at  least  one  of  its  greatest  exponents.  In  treating  of 
labor,  he  said  : 

Labor  is  the  real  measure  of  tho  exchangeable  value  of  all  commodities. 

This  view  he  maintained  with  the  most  conclusive  arguments,  and 
the  same  view  is  maintained  by  all  reputable  economical  writers 
whose  works  are  either  read  or  remembered. 

Testing  the  value  of  gold  by  these  great  measures,  labor  and  real 
estate,  what  results  do  we  find  ?  Details  need  not,  be  given.  I  hazard 
nothing  in  saying  that  under  this  crucial  comparison  it  will  be  found 
that  gold  has  very  nearly  if  not  quite  doubled  in  value  within  the  last 
five  years.  The  most  careless  observer  cannot  fail  to  discover  the  gen- 
eral correctness  of  this  statement,  and  the  most  careful  scrutiny  in 
every  locality  will  confirm  it.  The  universal  experience  of  those  who 
have  real  estate  or  labor  to  dispose  of  will  attest  its  truth.  The  reason 
of  this  greater  fall  in  the  prices  of  land  and  labor  than  in  commodities 
in  general  use  is  not  difficult  to  discover. 

If  the  articles  given  in  the  tables  of  the  New  York  Public,  which 
show  an  average  fall  in  price  of  19  per  cent.,  are  divided  into  two 
groups,  it  will  be  found  that  the  group  consisting  of  breadst  nil's, 
butter,  and  cheese,  provisions  and  tobacco,  sugar  aud  molasses,  and 
tea  and  coffee,  all  of  them  under  the  habits  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States  being  articles  of  necessary  consumption,  fell  in  price 
only  13  per  cent.,  while  the  other  group,  consisting  of  raw  material 
for  manufacture,  coal,  iron,  cotton,  leather,  and  wool,  fell  in  price 
26  per  cent. 

The  inevitable  consequences  of  a  rise  in  the  value  of  money,  or  in 
other  words  of  generally  falling  prices,  are  stagnation  of  industry, 
decreased  amount  of  employment,  and  shrunken  wages.  The  luxu- 
ries of  the  rich  and  the  comforts  of  the  middle  classes  are  at  such 
times  largely  curtailed  and  in  many  instances  cut  off  altogether,  but 
the  wage  classes,  even  when  they  earn  more  than  the  needs  of  sub- 
sistence, rarely  indulge  in  superfluities  or  extravagance  iu  living. 
For  the  purpose  of  getting  ahead  in  the  world  they  pinch  and  save  and 
live  in  the  most  frugal  manner  consistent  with  health  and  Strength. 

Hence  during  a  period  of  falling  prices  the  demand  for  the  actual 
necessaries  is  impaired  the  least,  and  the  demand  for  things  not  in 
exigent  requisition  is  impaired  the  most.  Changes  in  the  prices  of 
necessaries  and  luxuries, respectively,  must  be  in  correspondence  with 
the  changes  in  the  demands  for  them.  A  constantly  increasing  pro- 
portion of  the  aggregate  earnings  of  labor  and  capital  must  be  appro- 
priated to  the  actual  necessities  of  subsistence,  and  consequently 
the  fall  in  their  prices  will  be  the  least. 

The  aggregate  of  wages  will  be  largely  reduced  because  there  will 


19 

be  no  incentive  t<>  the  employment  of  labor  beyond  thai  decreasing 
amount  required  to  produce  the  necessaries  of  life  and  to  produce  also 
such  a  supply  of  comforts  and  luxuries  as  will  suffice  for  the  few  who 
may  still  be  able  to  indulge  in  them  ;  the  profits  of  both  these  kinds  of 
production  will  bo  reduced  to  the  lowest  point  consistent  with  their 
being  maintained  at  all.  It  is  easy  to  perceive  that  a  long-continued 
rise  in  the  value  of  money  and  fall  in  general  prices  would  destroy  all 
credit,  and  that  the  resulting  sufferings  of  the  people  would  finally 
drive  them  to  seek  relief  in  a  direct  exchange  of  commodities.  The 
price  of  the  raw  material  which  enters  into  all  kinds  of  manufacture 
falls  in  a  greater  ratio  than  do  the  necessaries  of  life,  because  the 
manufactured  article  can  be  dispensed  with,  while  the  coarse  food 
essential  to  the  existence  of  the  laborer  is  indispensable. 

The  tables  of  The  Public  do  not  give  the  prices  of  luxuries  at  dif- 
ferent periods,  nor  have  I  been  able  to  find  them  elsewhere  in  reliable 
form.  Nor  do  I  deem  it  necessary  to  furnish  them  in  order  to  illus- 
trate what  is  so  familiar.  The  fall  of  prices  is,  of  course,  greatest  in 
those  articles  for  which  there  is  the  greatest  decrease  in  the  demands, 
and  all  experience  shows  that  the  depressing  effect  upon  the  prices  of 
property  of  an  increasing  value  in  money  falls  first  in  point  of  time 
and  greatest  in  degree  on  luxuries. 

The  wage  classes  lose  half  their  accustomed  earnings  through  a  re- 
duction of  their  wages,  and  more  especially  through  unsteady  em- 
ployment and  lack  of  employment  altogether.  This  is  not  compen- 
sated by  a  corresponding  fall  in  the  prices  of  what  feeds  them.  On 
the  other  hand  such  consumers  of  luxuries  as  are  still  able  to  com- 
mand them  find  a  large  offset  to  the  diminution  of  their  incomes  in 
the  very  great  fall  in  the  prices  of  what  they  buy. 

These  obvious  principles  furnish  an  easy  explanation  of  the  present, 
depressed  condition  of  labor  and  real  estate.  Very  little  is  being 
produced,  especially  iu  manufacturing  industry,  except  what  is  ur- 
gently needed,  and  therefore  sure  of  a  market.  As  production  declines 
wages  decline,  and,  what  is  even  more  disastrous,  employment  becomes 
intermittent  and  precarious.  The  aggregate  of  a  laborer's  annual 
earnings  depends  quite  as  much  upon  the  constancy  of  his  employ- 
ment— the  number  of  days  in  the  year  that  he  can  get  employment— 
as  upon  the  rate  of  his  wages  when  he  is  fortunate  enough  to  find 
work  to  do. 

In  respect  to  real  estate,  nothing  is  salable  except  what  is  actually 
and  immediately  wanted.  Houses  to  the  extent  that  occupants  are 
ready  to  pay  rent  for  them,  and  stores  and  warehouses  within  the 
limits  of  the  restricted  and  still  diminishing  demaud,  will  command 
a  price,  although  a  low  one.  But  with  the  spirit  of  enterprise  crushed 
out  as  it  is  now,  by  the  striking  down  at  a  blow  of  one-half  of  the 
metallic  currency  of  the  world,  by  the  absolute  shrinkage  in  this 
country  of  accepted  paper  currencies,  and  by  the  still  greater  shrink- 
age of  such  currencies  relatively  to  advancing  population  and  com- 
merce, property  having  merely  prospective  value  has  ceased  to  be  re- 
garded as  property  at  all.  It  is  wholly  unavailable,  and  when  forced 
to  the  auction-block  sells  for  little  more  than  the  value  of  the  paper 
on  which  conveyances  of  it  are  written.  Unimproved  lots  in  growing 
cities,  undeveloped  mines  and  water-powers,  buildings  for  the  mo- 
ment unoccupied,  agricultural  lands  beyond  the  immediate  demand, 
are  all  iu  this  category.  Unless  under  exceptionable  conditions,  they 
are  entirely  unavailable  as  security  for  loans. 

Money  is  the  oxygen  of  exchange,  and  when  through  a  decrease  in 
quantity  it  is  rising  iu  value,  commerce  and  industry  become  asphyx- 


20 

iated.  The  business  of  the  world  is  now  writhing  and  stifling  under 
the  exhausted  receiver  of  a  standard  shrinking  and  shrunken  to  the 
constantly  appreciating  metal  gold  alone. 

Savings-banks,  trust  companies,  and  insurance  companies  are 
tumbling  into  ruin  every  day  in  all  parts  of  the  country.  In  the 
great  majority  of  cases  the  real-estate  securities,  now  sinking  in 
value  on  their  hands,  were  judiciously  selected.  Their  mortgages 
are  weak,  not  because  they  were  dishonestly  or  unwisely  taken,  but 
because  prices  have  been  struck  down  by  legislation  impossible  to 
have  been  foreseen  and  guarded  against.  The  condition  existing 
everywhere  is  faithfully  described  in  the  following  language  of  the 
bank  and  insurance  commissioner  of  Maine.  Reporting  January  2, 
1878,  upon  a  large  savings-bank  in  Bangor,  which  was  being  pressed 
by  its  depositors,  he  said  : 

Depositors  must  be  aware  that  a  forced  sale  of  the  assets,  especially  real  estate, 
at  this  time,  when  depression  rests  so  heavily  upon  this  class  of  property,  would 
result  injuriously  to  their  interest  and  induce  additional  and  needless  loss.  Ko 
ene  can  place  his  real  estate  upon  the  market  at  the  piesent  and  get  much  above 
one-half  of  its  actual  value. 

Mr.  A.  J.  Warner,  of  Ohio,  in  a  collection  of  able  essays  lately  pub- 
lished, predicts  that  if  the  gold  policy  is  persisted  in  juices  of  prop- 
erty will  fall  to  one-third  of  the  valuation  of  1874,  and  in  reference 
to  present  prices  adds: 

No  small  part  of  the  property  of  the  country  has  already  fallen  to  that  level,  and 
notably  tools  and  machinery  designed  for  reproduction. 

The  fall  in  real  estate  is  hardly  greater  in  cities  where  it  has  been 
the  subject  of  speculation,  or  in  the  newer  and  more  heavily  indebted 
sections  of  the  country,  than  it  is  in  the  most  staid  and  wealthy 
regions.  For  example,  the  blue-grass  regions  in  Kentucky,  where 
speculation  in  lands  and  mortgages  upon  lands  are  least  known,  have 
not  escaped  the  general  collapse.  A  recent  number  of  the  Lexington 
(Kentucky)  Press  says,  that  at  no  time  in  twenty-five  years  has  land 
in  that  section  been  so  low,  and  that  farms  heretofore  selling  at  from 
$100  to  $150  per  acre,  will  not  now  command  more  than  from  $60  to 
$90. 

From  every  city  in  the  Union,  from  Galveston  to  Bangor  and  from 
New  York  to  San  Francisco,  we  have  but  one  report.  Of  San  Fran- 
cisco, where  business  has  always  been  done  on  a  coin  basis,  I  can  speak 
from  personal  knowledge.  Outside  property  in  all  the  cities  has 
ceased  to  be  a  basis  of  credit,  while  inside  property  is  dull  of  sale  and 
has  very  largely  decreased  in  price. 

The  columns  of  the  local  newspapers  are  filled  with  notices  of  fore- 
closures of  mortgages  and  of  sheriffs'  sales.  More  property  is  being 
sacrificed  for  taxes  than  was  ever  before  known  in  the  history  of  this 
country. 

The  fall  that  has  taken  place  in  the  price  of  real  estate  under  the 
menace  and  approach  of  gold  payments  is  not  confined  to  the  United 
States. 

Wherever  the  gold  standard  has  been  or  is  being  established,  a 
similar  depression  prevails. 

In  the  London  Economist  of  December  22.  1377,  its  regular  Vienna 
correspondent,  writing  four  days  previously  in  respect  to  affairs  in 
Germany,  says : 

Not  even  the  news  from  Plevna  and  Paris  has  produced  the  least  improvement. 
The  stagnation  of  business  still  continues.  Landed  property  is  beginning  to  feel 
the  consequences  of  the  crisis  severely.  It  is  said  that  in  Berlin  seventeen  thou- 
sand to  eighteen  thousand  private  apartments  are  to  be  let.  This  statement  may 
be  somewhat  exaggerated.     Ou  the  other  hand,  the  Credit  Foneier  banks  are  in  a 


21 

position  of  great  difficulty.    Thei  rinter^ 

eet,  and  where  the  sale  or  their  property  tak<  a<    iali  often 

realizes  less  than  the  moi  ;■ 

The  Pomeranian  Mortgage  Bank  in  Coslinhas  been  obi 
at  the  price  of  300,000  mai  seed  to  Che  amount  or  1,2  -     s.-v- 

liar  oases  have  occurred,  and  as  the  German  mortgagi  •   about 

;ik.-  in  circulation,  a  crisis  is  generallj  feared. 

The  fall  in  the  wages  of  labor,  measured  in  gold,  lias  extended  to 
every  part  of  the  western  world  mid  over  all  fields  of  industry.  It 
bas  been  greatest,  as  always  at  periods  of  stagnation, in  the  wages  of 
unskilled  Labor,  bat  has  been  great  in  all  employments.  It  is  scarcely 
an  exaggeration  to  say  that  average  wages,  measured  in  gold,  have 
fallen  one-half  since  1-7-2-'?:'..  If  is  certainly  no  exaggeration  to  say 
that  the  receipts  of  the  wage  classes  have  diminished  to  a  much 
greater  extent,  if  to  the  fall  in  wages  are  added  the  losses  from  en- 
forced idleness.  The  particular  class  of  employes  on  the  Baltimore 
and  Ohio  Railroad  who  commenced  the  disturbances  of  last  summer 
did  not  complain  so  much  of  the  reduction  of  their  pay.  They  prob- 
ably would  not  have  risen  in  riotous  assemblage  if  their  employment 
had  been  constant.  The  number  of  days  in  the  month  they  were  un- 
employed was  to  them  a  much  more  grievous  burden.  This  reduction 
of  employment  is  not  confined  to  railroads,  but  extends  to  every  in- 
dustrial department. 

The  most  deplorable  accounts  of  the  condition  of  labor  in  England 
and  Germany  reach  us  constantly.  In  Berlin  revolutionary  outbreaks 
have  been  kept  down  only  by  the  bayonet  aud  the.  breech-loader. 
Iu  England  large  groups  of  laborers  are  on  the  verge  of  starvation, 
and  that  catastrophe  has  thus  far  been  staved  off  only  by  strain'. 
orces  of  public  and  private  charity  to  the  utmost. 

In  this  country  the  distress  of  labor,  reaching  a  point  never  before 
known,  has  culminated  in  mobs  which  have  given  ominous  expression 
to  the  despair  of  the  people.  The  Army  of  the.  United  States,  never 
before  used  for  such  a  purpose, has  bee:,  called  upon  within  a  twelve- 
month to  perform  police  duty,  to  preserve  social  order,  and  to  protect 
private  property.  The  advocates  of  the  gold  policy,  conscious  appar- 
ently that  it  will  make  chronic  this  condition  of  things  and  perma- 
nently demand  the  same  remedy,  have  insisted  that  the  numbers  of 
the  Army  should  not  only  be  kept  up  but  enlarged,  not  to  resist  for- 
eign enemies,  guard  forts,  or  enforce  the  laws  of  the  United  States, 
but  to  repress  the  riotous  upiisiug  of  a  hungry, naked, freezing,  and 
frantic  populace. 

The  New  York  Tribune  of  the  7th  instant  editorially  says: 

One  of  the  most  terribly  sicrnitirant  incidents  connected  with  the  loss  of  the  Me- 
tropolis last  week  was  the  fact  that  one  hour  after  the  news  that  the  ship  had  gone 
down  arrived  in  Philadelphia  with  all  the  exaggerated  horrors  of  a  first  dispatch, 
the  office  of  the  Messrs.  Collins  was  besieged  with  hundreds  of  hunger-bitten,  de- 
rent  men.  begging  for  the  places  of  the  drowned  laborers.  In  this  eity  there  have 
been  over  a  thousand  applicants  at  the  agency  for  New  South  Wales,  to  be  sent  out 
as  laborers  and  mechanics  on  the  clipper  ship  starting  this  mouth  for  Sydney. 

These  people  represent  but  a  fraction  of  the  great  mass  of  unemployed  poor  in 
the  cities;  men  who  are  not  paupers  from  inclination  any  more  than  the  most  re- 
spectable reader  of  the  Tribune:  honest,  industrious,  frugal,  in  the  majority  of 
cases  heads  of  families,  who  are  out  of  work,  and  are  ready  to  20  to  the  other  side 
of  the  globe,  or  to  the  forests  of  Brazil,  to  get  work  to  keep  their  wives  and  children 
from  starving.  It  is  useless  to  ignore  this  miserable,  gaunt  fact,  which  stares  us 
in  the  face  at  every  corner.  It  is  not  to  be  dispelled  any  longer  by  soup-houses  on 
the  one  hand,  organized  precautions  against  tramps  on  the  other.  'We  have  had 
enough  discussion  on  the  relative  advantages  of  occasional  and  organized  charity. 
It  is  not  charity  that  is  wanted  :  it  is  work,  aud  the  only  work  which  offers  now  as 
a  relief  to  the  suffering  in  the  cities  is  farming.  How  the  unemployed  mechanics 
and  laborers  have  got  through  this  winter.  God  only  knows — they  have  been  greatly 
helped  by  the  mild  weatl  er.    But  in  three  weeks  spring  will  open  and  what  is 


22 

then  to  be  done?  The  revival  of  business  will  be  too  slight  to  afford  them  any- 
tangible  help.  Are  they  all  to  sink  down  permanently  into  tramps  and  paupers  f 
Or,  m  case  of  a  revival  of  the  labor  troubles  of  last  July,  are  we  to  keep  them  as  a 
reserve  corps,  ready,  as  then,  to  join,  with  terrible  effect,  the  side  of  disorder,  riot, 
and  rapine  s 

This  simple  description  of  the  deplorable  condition  to  which  the 
laboring  populations  of  New  York  and  Philadelphia  have  been  reduced 
has  about  it  a  touching  pathos  which  speaks  straight  to  the  heart, 
and  with  a  power  all  the  greater  that  it  is  but  too  easily  recognized  as  a 
description  of  miseries  everywhere  prevailing.  The  woes  and  wretch- 
edness of  war  have  been  often  portrayed ;  but  have  Senators  consid- 
ered that  their  sweep  is  far  narrower  than  that  of  the  calamities 
which  follow  contraction  and  an  appreciation  in  the  value  of  money  ? 
The  fiery  pathway  of  revolution  can  be  trod  with  less  suffering  than 
the  burning  plowshare  of  falling  prices,  decaying  industries,  enforced 
idleness,  and  destitution  of  laborers — conditions  absolutely  insepara- 
ble from  contraction. 

The  sacrifices  of  the  people  of  this  country  in  the  civil  war  have  been 
the  inspiration  of  eloquence  since  it  closed,  and  will  continue  to  be  so 
as  long  as  there  is  a  slave  to  be  freed  or  an  imperiled  right  to  be  main- 
tained and  wherever  self-denial  and  heroism  shall  be  considered  hu- 
man virtues.  Five  hundred  thousand  of  our  choicest  youth  returned 
from  it  no  more  to  wives,  to  mothers,  and  to  children.  Others 
without  number  returned  mangled  and  maimed.  The  substance  of 
the  country  was  consumed  in  the  support  of  armies,  and  property 
Avas  destroyed  by  millions  upon  the  land  and  upon  the  sea.  But  the 
exaltation  of  the  heroic  sentiment  made  it  all  endurable,  and  pride 
mingled  with  and  assuaged  the  grief  with  which  the  dead  were 
mourned.  On  the  one  side  was  attachment  to  the  Union  and  the  be- 
lief that  both  liberty  and  country  depended  upon  the  struggle.  On 
the  other  side  was  an  exaggerated  and,  as  I  think,  misdirected  but 
none  the  less  sincere  attachment  to  local  franchises  and  to  long- 
cherished  political  theories  of  State  sovereignty. 

But  all  the  miseries  and  all  the  sacrifices  of  that  war,  incalculable 
as  they  are,  were  small  in  comparison  with  the  miseries  and  sacri- 
fices inflicted  upon  the  country  since  the  war  by  the  contraction  of 
the  currency  and  its  inevitable  results,  the  increased  pressure  of  debts 
and  the  shrunken  incomes  of  laborers.  No  exaltation  of  heroic  senti- 
ment and  pride  aids  in  sustaining  these  later  and  greater  sacrifices. 

Those  whose  husbands,  fathers,  and  sons  sink  in  the  struggle  with 
grim  poverty  or  wander  outcasts  and  tramps  over  the  face  of  the 
earth  have  the  blow  softened  to  them  by  no  reflected  luster  of  heroic 
deeds.  Those  whose  accumulations,  large  or  small,  are  swept  away 
by  mortgages  insidiously  swollen  in  magnitude  by  an  appreciation 
in  the  value  of  money,  are  not  consoled  by  the  proud  thought  that 
their  property  has  been  a  contribution  to  sustain  the  existence  of  the 
Government  or  the  liberties  of  the  country,  or  that  they  have  been 
reduced  to  beggary  in  order  that  the  nation  might  live. 

Have  Senators  considered  the  true  significance  of  a  reduction  of  the 
money  incomes  of  the  wage-earning  classes  by  one-half  ?  Have  they 
-sounded  the  depths  ?  Have  they  gauged  the  proportions  or  a  calamity 
like  that  ?  With  all  the  mitigations  of  which  it  admits  it  is  a  pro- 
tracted and  corroding  misery.  The  money  cost  of  the  things  which 
workmen  buy  may  be  reduced,  but  not  at  all  in  proportion  to  the  re- 
duction in  their  incomes.  There  is  no  reduction,  however,  in  individual 
debts,  nor  in  that  enormous  mass  of  public  debts,  national,  State, 
county,  municipal,  the  burden  of  which  rests  largely  upon  the  always 


23 

overloaded  back  of  labor.  When  Oris  Government  pledges  ita  credit 
the  property  in  existence  bears  but  a  small  part  of  the  burden  ol  its 
redemption,  compared  with  the  portion  which  must  be  exaeted  from 
the  future  earnings  of  the  people.  The  interest  on  the  mortgage  is 
paid  not  in  money  drawn  from  hoards,  but  from  the  annual  produc- 
tions of  the  country.  ...  4  ,  •  i 
Let  prioes  range  as  they  may.  interest  and  principal  must  be  paid 
in  the  full  number  of  dollars  promised,  without  reference  to  their 
value.  The  lower  prices  fall,  the  greater  will  be  the  proportion  of 
annual  productions  required  to  make  payment,  and  the  less  will  be 
the  proportion  which  is  left  to  reimburse  capital  and  labor,  in  a  <n- 
\  ision  of  Losses  between  these  it  is  always  capital  which  escapes  with 
a  minimum.                                                          ,  .                    .            ,      , 

The  annual  interest  on  public  debts  in  this  country  is  not  far  from 
fcJOfl  U00  000— avast  amount  to  be  taken  out  of  the  currenl  earnings  of 
the  people.  To  double,  the  weight  of  this  obligation  by  doubling  the, 
value  of  money,  and  reducing  money  wages  one-half,  is  to  render  a 
burden,  already  great,  well-nigh  insupportable. 

It  is  a  comparatively  small  portion  of  the  people  of  this  or  any 
other  country  that  obtain  the  gold  and  silver  with  which  debts  must 
be  paid  by  delving  in  the  mines.  The  vast  majority  work  for  gold 
and  silver,  not  in  the  mineral  re-ions  but  in  the  rice,  tobacco,  wheat, 
and  corn  fields;  at  the  anvil,  forge,  and  lathe;  in  the  seams  of  coal 
andiron:  and  in  ships  on  the  seas.  The  debt-paying  power  of  the 
country  is  measured  by  the  amounts  of  gold  and  silver  for  which  the 
products  of  these  and  all  other  industries  can  be  exchanged.  I  his 
gauo-e  measures  the  value  of  money.  These  scales  weigh  the  burden 
of  debt,  It  is  only  because  the  money  function  has  been  conferred 
on  gold  and  silver.'and  that  debts  are,  expressed  and  solvable  in  them, 
that  it  becomes  so  tranBcendently  important  that  their  production 
should  increase  with  the  increasing  population  and  money  demands 
of  the  world.  ,       .  , ,         ., 

It  is  because  of  this,  that  anv  effort  to  deprive  gold  or  -ilver  or 
any  portion  of  either,  of  the  debt-paying  function,  without  fur- 
nishing something  to  take  its  place,  is  treason  to  the  human  race. 
Measured  against  the  consequences  of  that  treason,  the  disappoint- 
ment of  what  are  called,  whether  in  grim  joke  or  not  I  am  unable  to 
say,  "the  honest  expectations  of  creditors,"  public  or  private,  sinks 
into  utter  nothingness.  As  commodities,  whether  in  production,  use, 
or  amount  of  existing  stocks,  gold  and  silver  are  utterly  insignificant 
factors  in  the  world's  economy— the  least  useful  and  necessary  of  all 
the  metals.  Stripped  of  the  money  function  vested  in  them  by  legisla- 
tion, there  are  probably  no  two  commodities  whose  entire  destruction 
would  interfere  less  with  the  happiness  of  the  human  race.  1  low  com- 
parativelv  insignificant  the  labor  employed  in  their  production  is 
will  appear  from  a  single  reflection.  The  aggregate  annual  produc- 
tion of  both  metals  does  not  exceed  $200,000,000,  while  the  annual 
productions  of  this  country  alone,  as  measured  in  them,  amounts  to 
thousands  of  millions  of  dollars,  and  of  the  whole  world  to  a  sum 
too  vast  to  be  appreciated.  In  view  of  these  facts  it  needs  no  close 
calculation  to  reveal  the  enormity  of  the  crime  of  striking  down  any 
portion  of  the  money  metals  upon  whose  volume  depends  the  debt- 
payiix--  capacity  of  individuals  as  well  as  of  nations.  If  the  money 
of  this  country  "be  computed  at  $700,000,000.  an  addition  of  10  per  cent, 
to  its  value  would  be  a  gratuity  of  670,000,000  to  the  possessors  of 
money  and  a  gratuity  of  M  per  cent,  to  the  creditors  of  the  country 
on  all  debts  due  them.     On  the  other  hand,  the   property  of   the 


24 

country,  which  is  estimated  at  $40,000,000, ((00,  would  be  valued  at 
$4,000,000,000  less  than  before;  and  to  that  extent  the  credit  of  its 
owners  and  their  ability  to  pay  debts  would  be  curtailed,  to  say  noth- 
ing: of  its  paralyzing  effect  upon  industry  and  commerce. 

This  is  a  direct  premium  to  those  who  are  engaged  in  swapping  dol- 
lars and  a  ruinous  tax  upon  those  who  are  engaged  in  earning  them. 
The  effect  of  a  diminution  of  the  value  of  the  metallic  money  of  the 
world  by  striking  down  any  portion  of  it  may  be  illustrated  by  the 
dealings  in  the  stock  of  an  incorporated  company,  as  (say)  Pacific 
Mail  Company,  whose  capital  stock  is  represented  by  two  hundred 
thousand  shares.  Suppose  that  sales  to  deliver  to  a  very  large 
amount  had  been  made  on  this  basis,  wouM  it  not  be  considered  a 
bald  robbery  on  the  part  of  those  who  held  the  agreements  for  the 
delivery  of  the  stock  to  procure  the  passage  of  laws  to  reduce  the 
number  of  the  shares  by  one-half,  or  by  any  other  amount,  without  a 
corresponding  reduction  of  the  number  of  shares  to  be  delivered  f 
Would  not  those  who  had  made  promises  to  deliver  shares  be  justified 
in  renouncing  and  repudiating  their  contracts,  unless  such  corre- 
sponding reduction  were  made  ? 

There  can  be  but  one  answer  to  this.  Is  a  similar  j  uggle  with  money 
any  tbe  less  a  robbery?  It  cannot  be  controverted  that  whoever 
is  in  debt  has,  in  the  language  of  the  stock  exchange,  sold  money 
"  short."  In  the  first  supposed  case  parties  had  agreed  to  deliver  in 
the  future  that  of  which  they  were  not  then  in  possession,  to  wit, 
shares  of  stock.  In  the  second  case  they  have  agreed  to  deliver  in 
the  future  that  of  which  they  are  not  in  present  possession,  to  wit, 
money.  The  distinction  between  the  two  cases  is  in  the  thing  to  be 
delivered,  and  not  in  the  underlying  principle.  If  half  the  money 
upon  which  the  promisors  have  recourse  for  the  fulfillment  of  their 
obligations  were  stricken  down  by  legislation,  would  it  contain  less 
of  the  iugredients  of  rascality  than  in  the  other  case  ?  And  if  the 
sufferers  should  make  vigorous  efforts  to  resist  the  operations  would 
they  merit  the  epithets  of  lunatics,  swindlers,  and  repudiators  ? 

Would  not  the  epithet  of  swindler  be  more  justly  applicable  to  the 
other  party  ? 

The  one  of  the  Comstock  lode  yields  in  value  about  one  half  gold 
and  one-half  silver.  If  some  evil  spirit  could  by  magic  and  incan- 
tation eliminate  either  all  the  gold  or  all  the  silver,  the  miner  would 
have  to  extract  and  reduce  double  the  quantity  of  ore  in  order  to  ob- 
tain the  same  results  as  before.  It  may  not  lie  so  obvious,  but  it  is 
just  as  certainly  true  that  if  by  charms  and  wiles  silver  should  be 
eliminated  from  the  money  metals  of  the  world,  one-half  of  the  money 
profits  and  debt-paying  capacity  of  every  species  of  industry  would 
be  destroyed. 

The  case  briefly  summed  up  shows  that  while  silver  has  fallen 
since  1872-73,  about  10  per  cent,  as  measured  in  gold,  commercial 
commodities  measured  in  the  same  way  have  fallen  twice  10  per  cent. ; 
and  that  wages  and  real  estate  have  fallen  perhaps  one-half  in  all 
countries  which  use  the  gold  standard,  or  in  which  paper  currencies 
are  referred  to  gold  and  regulated  by  it.  In  other  words  the  pur- 
chasing power  of  silver  although  impaired  by  demonetization  has 
risen  10  per  cent,  in  relation  to  commodities  and  90  per  cent,  in  rela- 
tion to  land  and  labor.  There  is  not  a  town  or  city  in  Europe  or 
America  where  a  given  number  of  Mexican  silver  dollars,  or  of  United 
States  silver  dollars,  if  their  coinage  were  permitted,  would  not  to- 
day buy  more  houses,  more  stores,  more  of  general  commodities,  and 
more  labor  than  they  would  have  bought  iu  lH~2-7:i. 


25 

In  i S3 
tical.  Now  silver  prices  arc  asc<  rtained  by  adding  1"  per  cent,  to 
current  gold  prices.  Making  this  simple  calculation  we  find  that 
in  purchasing  the  entire  mass  of  articles  exported  from  England 
618,385,000  in  silver  won  Id  go  as  far  in  1877  as  £21,355,000  of  the 
same  metal  in  1872.  We  find  that  $75.90  in  silver  would  bay  as  much 
at  wholesale  of  the  leading  articles  of  commerce  in  the  <  ity  of  New 
fork,  May  1,  1876,  as  (85  in  silver  would  buy  May  1,  187'2.  We  fiud 
that  an  average  ton  of  iron  and  steel  of  all  kinds,  raw  and  manufact- 
ured, which  in  1872-'73,  would  command  iu  England  |61.84  in  silver 
will  now  command  only  $46.57;  and  that  a  ton  of  coal  whi<  h  would 
then  command  $5.05  in  silver  will  now  command  only  $3.80.  We 
also  find  that  in  reference  to  a  large  group  of  commodities,  selected 
by  the  London  Economist,  the  purchasing  power  of  Bilver  rose  '-'•'  per 
cent,  in  Loudon  during  the  lour  years  ending  in  December,  1877. 

By  what  facts  aud  arguments,  then,  is  it  proven  that  silver  has 
depreciated  except  in  relation  to  gold  /  Is  not  its  command  over  the 
entire  range  of  the  objects  of  human  desire  greater  than  it  was  five 
years  ago?  Will  it  not  in  all  markets  of  Europe  and  America 
exchange  for  more  and  better  food,  shelter,  and  clothing,  and  for  more 
comforts  and  luxuries  generally  than  it  would  five  years  ago  I  Must 
not  greater  sacrifices  in  sweat  and  toil  and  property  be  made  to  obtain 
412A  grains  of  standard  silver  now  than  were  required  to  obtain  either 
a  gold  or  silver  dollar  when  silver  was  demonetized  ,' 

In  the  face  of  these  patent  and  accumulated  facts,  it  is  still  claimed 
that  silver  has  depreciated  to  such  a  degree  that  it  would  be  dis- 
honest to  pay  debts  in  it,  even  if  it  would  legally  discharge  them. 
An  eminent  jurist  once  said  of  a  certain  legal  proposition  that  he 
could  not  conceive  of  a  human  mind  so  constituted  as  to  entertain  it. 
I  am  equally  incompetent  to  conceive  of  a  human  mind  so  constituted 
as  not  to  see  that  silver  has  appreciated  rather  than  fallen  in  value, 
aud  that  gold  has  been  so  enormously  enhanced  in  value  that  to 
gratuitously  require  debts  to  he  paid  in  it  is  either  the  most  gigantic 
folly  or  the  most  gigantic  fraud  of  all  the  ages. 

Mr.  President,  in  the  remarks  which  I  have  had  the  honor  of  sub- 
mitting to-day,  I  have  endeavored  to  demonstrate  that  silver  has  not 
depreciated  in  value  since  its  demonetization,  and  that  the  general 
reference  to  the  silver  dollar  proposed  in  this  bill  as  a  dishonoring 
medium  of  payment  aud  as  a  depreciated  coin,  shows  a  strange  mis- 
apprehension of  the  facts  or  a  sinister  perversion  of  the  truth.  Befoi  e 
taking  my  seat,  however,  I  ask  the  forbearance  of  the  Senate  v 
make  brief  allusion  to  matter  personal  to  me  aud  of  special  i; 
to  my  State. 

It  is  certainly  not  my  wont  nor  agreeable  to  me  to  obtrude  my  pri- 
vate affairs  upon  the  attention  of  the  Senate  or  the  public;  bur  1  am 
advised  by  those  whose  judgment  I  hold  in  high  esteem  that  it  is  my 
duty  to  notice  charges  persisteutly  and  extensively  made.  It  has 
been  widely  iterated  that  I  have  special  and  individual  interests  to 
be  subserved  by  remonetizing  silver,  and  that  my  advocacy  of  it  is 
influenced  by  sordid  and  ignoble  motive.  It  is  not  needed  to  give  my 
constituents  assurance  that  these  charges  are  false.  The  people  who 
honor  me  with  a  seat  in  the  Senate  have  universally  treated  such 
charges  with  the  derisive  scorn  that  slander  merits.  And  whatever 
may  be  the  conflict  of  opinion  on  the  Pacific  coast  as  to  the  wisdom 
of  my  course,  I  am  proud  to  say  that  I  do  not  believe  there  is  to  be 
found  there  a  reputable  man  or  woman  of  whatever  shade  of  political 
faith  who  would  asperse  me  with  dishonorable  motive. 


26 

I  am  not  vain  enough  to  suppose  that  anything  relating  to  me  could 
be  of  the  slightest  public  interest,  except  in  so  far  as  it  might  affect 
the  character  of  this  high  body  which  it  is  the  universal  wish  to  see 
maintained  unsullied. 

I  have  not  been  unobservant  of  the  efforts  to  create  a  general  pub- 
lic impression  that  in  advocating  the  rehabilitation  of  silver  I  am 
controlled  by  unworthy  and  sinister  motives.  Nor  am  I  insensible 
to  the  labored  endeavor  to  disparage  my  action  by  the  repetition  of 
the  statement  that  I  am  one  of  the  owners  of  these  fruitful  proper- 
ties known  as  the  bonanza  mines  and  that  my  personal  gains  would 
be  directly  and  immensely  enhanced  by  the  remonetization  of  silver. 
To  this  I  now  proceed  to  make  specific  reply.  I  never  had  any  con- 
siderable interest  in  the  bonanza  mines,  and  the  little  interest  I  did 
once  have  has  long  since  been  disposed  of.  The  fact  that  I  have  not 
had  connection  with  productive  silver  mines  since  the  silver  question 
was  agitated  other  than  occasional  unimportant  transactions  in  stocks 
in  San  Francisco  by  my  business  agent  on  my  account,  so  inconsider- 
able that  I  did  not  keep  informed  of  them,  is  well  known  to  my  con- 
stituents and  to  all  others  who  have  knowledge  of  my  affairs.  I  do 
own  stock  in  one  of  the  very  large  number  of  non-paying  mines  on 
the  Comstock  lode.  This  mine  ceased  to  be  productive  more  than 
three  years  ago.  A  vast  amount  of  money  has  been  paid  by  its  stock- 
holders to  carry  on  the  extensive  explorations  continuously  made  since 
that  time.  That  it  ever  will  again  become  a  productive  mine  is  a 
matter  of  only  distant  hope.  I  have  no  investment;  in  productive 
silver  mines,  and  my  investments  in  non-productive  silver  mines  are 
much  less  extensive  than  in  mines  which  produce  gold  exclusively. 
Each  and  every  statement  to  the  contrary  I  declare  here  in  this  pres- 
ence to  be  utterly  and  unqualifiedly  uutrue.  I  advocate  the  remone- 
tization of  silver  because  both  justice  and  expediency  demand  it,  and 
because,  even  if  it  does  not  restore  a  full  measure  of  prosperity,  it 
will  check  the  rapidly  spreading  bankruptcy  and  poverty  which 
threaten  to  overwhelm  the  country. 

In  the  summerof  1876  a  law  was  passedhere  to  substitute  $.'0,000,000 
of  subsidiary  silver  coins  for  the  fractional  paper  currency.  The  direct 
effect  of  that  law  was  to  make  the  Government  a  large  purchaser  of 
silver  bullion  and  consequently  to  maintain  or  advance  its  price.  Had 
I  no  other  motive  in  advocating  the  restoration  of  silver  than  that  its 
value  might  be  enhanced,  I  should  certainly  have  supported  that  law. 
I  voted  against  it  because  I  believed,  as  I  then  stated,  that — 

This  sort  of  a  scheme  will  in  no  wise  relieve  the  wants  of  the  country  or  remove 
the  pall  of  doubt  and  uncertainty  which  now  hangs  over  it,  and  causes  complete 
stagnation  and  paralysis  in  every  industrial  department. 

We  have  had  within  twelve  months  three  several  accounts  from  the 
same  newspaper  press  relative  to  the  attitude  of  the  principal  owners 
of  the  bonanza  mines  on  the  question  of  remonetizing  silver.  The 
first,  and  this  was  the  report  longest  persisted  in,  wa«  that  they  were 
in  favor  of  it  and,  without  specifically  stating  how,  that  they  were 
corruptly  promoting  it  by  every  means  in  their  power.  Second,  that 
they  were  opposed  to  it.  This  second  report  hardly  had  time  to  be 
echoed  and  re-echoed  between  New  York  and  San  Francisco  before 
the  press  in  the  first-named  city  revived  the  original  account,  and  this 
time  with  the  addition  that  they  had  raised  a  fund  of  $500,000,  to  be 
corruptly  placed  and  corruptly  used. 

Although  I  am  personally  acquainted  with  the  gentlemen  referred 
to  and  with  all  others  <m  the  Pacific  coast  who  are  largely  interested 
in  productive  silver  mines,  I  have  no  knowledge  other  than  such  as 


Somes  to  me  through  public  minor  what  their  views  and  wishes  on 
the  silver  question  really  are.  I  have  not  at  any  time  held  communi- 
cation with  them,  either  collectively  or  individually,  personally  or 
through  correspondence  or  otherwise  on  this  subject. 

Of  the  four  gentlemen  composing  what  is  known  as  the  bonanza 
tirm,  I  believe,  although  I  have  no  authority  for  statin-  it,  that  the 
two  who  have  personally  devoted  all  the  years  of  their  manhood  to 
gold  and  silver  mining  are  in  favor  of  the  remonetization  of  silver. 
They  know  by  long  practical  experience  the  impossibility  of  flooding 
the  world  with  cheap  silver.  The  other  two  who  have  always  been 
engaged  in  business  pursuits  in  San    Francisco  and  have  never  been 

themselves  practically  engaged  in  mining,  I  believe  to  be  opposed  to 

the  remonetization  of  silver.  Whatever  their  views  may  be,  I  be- 
lieve them  to  be  honestly  entertained. 

The  statement  that  $500,000  or  any  othersnm  has  been  contributed 
by  the  bonanza  owners  or  by  anybody  else  to  procure  the  remone- 
tization of  silver,  is,  in  my  belief,  without  foundation,  and  was  so 
known  to  be  by  those  who  uttered  it.  The  charge  that  venal  com- 
binations have 'been  formed  and  money  raised  for  such  purpose  by 
those  interested  in  silver  mining  would  imply  idiocy  on  the  part  of 
the  mine-owners,  if  it  be  true,  as  is  maintained  by  a  majority  of 
those  who  make  the  charge,  that  the  remonetization  of  silver  would 
tend  inevitably  to  depreciate  its  value.  I  know  of  no  money  raised 
for  such  purpose,  and  it  is  my  unhesitating  belief  that  none  has  been 
furnished  or  attempted  to  be  furnished  for  such  purpose.  I  know 
that  the  State  Which  I  have  the  honor  to  represent  in  part  upon  this 
floor  is  too  patriotic  and  high  spirited  to  support  any  measure,  how- 
ever advantageous  to  itself,  which  would  be  prejudicial  to  the  gen- 
eral interests,  or  to  indorse  its  representatives  in  doing  so. 

But  denying  as  I  do  that  Iain  personally  interested  in  the  remoneti- 
zation of  silver.  1  wish  to  have  it  distinctly  understood  that  I  do  not 
even  by  implication  admit  that  my  right  to  legislate  on  the  subject 
would  be  lost  or  in  any  way  impaired  if  the  reverse  were  true.  A  fas- 
tidiousness of  this  delicate  order  would  be  more  nice  than  wise.  It  has 
never  been  required  of  anyone  here  except  the  alleged  owners  of  silver 
mines.  Has  it  ever  been  regarded  as  dishonorable  for  legislators,  who 
may  have  personal  interests  in  iron,  copper,  lead,  and  salt  mines,  in 
cotton  factories,  or  in  any  other  manufacturing  industry,  or  in  wool- 
growing,  to  vote  for  or  against  tariff's  and  other  laws  directly  affect- 
fno-  those  interests  ?  Has  this  ganzy  virtue  restrained  owners  of  stock 
mnationa]  banks  from  voting  in  controlling  numbers  for  laws  directly 
benefiting  those  institutions!  Has  the  metropolitan  press  demanded 
that  persons  so  interested  should  abstain  from  voting  here  on  such 
questions  ?  If  such  a  rule  were  insisted  upon  might  it  not  leave  one 
or  both  branches  of  Congress  without  a  quorum  .'  Might  not  the  strict 
enforcement  of  BUch  a  rule  render  necessary  the  creation  of  an  idle 
and  privileged  class  to  legislate  for  the  country  ? 

The  silver  miners  of  the  United  States  have  shirked  no  duty  either 
in  peace  or  war.  They  demand  neither  protective  legislation  nor  ex- 
emptions from  their  full  shai  e  in  the  burden  of  taxes,  nor  special  privi- 
leges of  any  kind;  but  they  have  special  interests  in  the  production 
of  silver,  and  it  is  a  task  equally  easy  and  grateful  to  me  to  vindicate 
them.  They  are  engaged  in  a  lawful  and  honest  industry,  and  who 
between  the   two  oceans   are   better  entitled  to   fair  treatment  than 

thev  ? 

The  people  of  Nevada  do  not  shrink  from  any  comparisons  to 
which  thev  -an  be  subjected.     It  was  because  they  were  known  to  be 


-  28 

loyal  and  patriotic  that  Nevada  was  admitted  as  a  State  into  the 
Union.  It  was  admitted  during  the  crisis  of  the  civil  war,  as  an  added 
bulwark  to  the  defense  and  liberty  of  the  country.  If  their  numbers 
were  and  are  few  they  have  maintained  good  government,  efficiently 
protected  life  and  property,  liberally  endowed  institutions  of  educa- 
tion and  beneficence,  and  have  so  well  ordered  their  finances  that 
their  governor  has  been  recently  urged  to  convene  the  Legislature  in 
extra  session  to  reduce  taxes  in  order  to  prevent  the  accumulation  of 
an  inconvenient  surplus  in  the  treasury. 

I  am  ready  to  meet  here  and  everywhere  any  comparison  between 
the  vague,  shadowy,  and  unsubstantial  after-born  expectations  and 
understandings  of  the  holders  of  bonds  promising  coin  that  they 
shall  be  paid  in  gold  as  against  the  equitable  and  lawful  claim  of 
my  constituents  that  one  of  the  money  metals  of  the  Constitution 
shall  not  be  stricken  down  after  they  have  crossed  a  continent  to  ex- 
plore for  it  and  devoted  their  lives  and  fortunes  to  its  development 
and  production.  I  confront  the  charge  that  they  seek  an  unjust  addi- 
tion of  10  per  cent,  to  the  value  of  silver  by  its  renionetization  with 
the  demand  that  the  robbery  of  10  per  cent,  of  their  just  earnings  by 
its  demonetization  shall  no  longer  be  persisted  in.  When  they  em- 
barked in  the  business  of  silver  mining  they  had  every  right  to  ex- 
pect and  understand  that  it  would  continue  to  be  money,  as  it  had 
always  been  as  far  back  as  history  or  tradition  goes.  They  had  no 
reason  to  believe  that  it  would  be  denied  the  money  function  to  which 
it  had  been  consecrated  by  the  unwritten  law  of  all  the  ages,  and  to 
which  it  was  dedicated  by  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

Have  the  recently  formed  expectations  of  bondholders  to  be  paid  in 
gold  any  foundation  either  in  equity  or  antiquity  comparable  to  the 
right  of  the  miner  of  the  Pacific  coast  to  expect  that  silver  would 
continue  to  enjoy  its  ancient  franchise  of  coinage  f 

The  bondholders  have  invested  their  money  upon  a  contract  em- 
bodied in  a  law,  which  was  constructive  notice  to  them  of  its  terms. 
Direct  notice  was  also  given  them  by  the  law  itself  being  referred  to 
on  the  face  of  each  bond,  together  with  the  terms  on  which  they  are 
by  that  law  made  payable.  The  bondholders'  right  to  a  faithful  per- 
formance of  this  coutract  is  as  earnestly  insisted  upon  by  the  advo- 
cates of  this  bill  as  by  its  opponents.  The  miners  have  not  only  in- 
vested their  money,  but  have  risked  health  and  life  upon  the  faith  of 
then  existing  law,  which  was  a  solemn  pledge  to  them  that  the  pre- 
cious metals  were  both  to  continue  to  be  used  as  money.  The  bond- 
bolder  asks  that  laws  shall  be  continued  in  force  which  were  enacted 
a  tier  his  contract  was  made,  and  which  changed  its  terms  to  his  ad- 
vantage and  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  nation,  and  especially  of  the 
silver  miner,  whose  industry  it  threatens  to  destroy.  The  miner  asks 
t  liar  the  Constitution  shall  be  observed,  and  that  the  law  under  which 
his  industry  was  organized  and  upon  which  it  was  founded  shall  be 
restored.  These  two  demands  are  incompatible  with  each  other.  To 
t  lie  impartial  judgment  of  the  American  people  the  miner  submits 
their  comparative  equity.  The  prizes  in  mining  are  few,  the  failures 
many,  but  there  is  always  hope  enough  to  inspire  continued  effort; 
there  is  always  doubt  enough  to  check  undue  expansion.  A  compar- 
atively small  number  have  reached  the  plane  of  success,  while  many 
have  fainted  and  fallen  by  the  way.  Shall  those  who  are  now  hope- 
fully toiling  be  punished  for  the  successes  of  the  few  ?  No  braver  or 
hardier  men  ever  courted  fortune  by  the  straightforward  road  of  toil, 
Bee,  and  privation. 

President  Lincoln,  in  one  of  his  messages  to  Congress,  declared  them 


29 

worthy  not  merely  of  the  ordinary  a  of  law  and  justice,  but 

of  "extraordinary"  measures  of  encouragement. 

The  mining  regions  of  this  country  frown  with  the  most  forbidding 
aspectsof  nature.  In  his  restless  wanderings  in  search  of  the  precious 
metals  the  miner  sees  no  stately  forests,  no  Bmiline  lawns  nor  Lus- 
cious fruits  to  enchant  the  senses  or  soothe  the  mind;  but  it  is  in  torrid 
valleys  and  on  bare,  bleak,  and  trackless  mountains  that  gold  and 
silver  are  sought  and  only  occasionally  found.  In  this  search  the 
miner  leaves  behind  him  every  luxury  of  life,  every  convenience  of 
eomi'ort,  and  every  necessity  of  growth. 

The  metal  which  the  silver  miner  seeks  to  obtain  is  not  as  is  usual 
in  gold  mining  gathered  from  alluvial  sands  by  unskilled  toil  ;  if  can 
only  be  wrenched  from  its  embraces  of  adamant  by  exhausting  labor, 
l!  can  only  be  separated  from  its  baser  surroundings  by  expensive 
machinery  and  the  efforts  of  patient  science.  No  dollar  of  gold  or 
silver  obtained  by  mining  has  ever  involved  the  robbing  of  one  man 
by  another,  but  lias  been  fairly  won  in  a  struggle  between  the  rude 
forces  of  nature  and  the  dauntless  energy  of  man,  and  was  an  addi- 
tion to  the  wealth  of  the  human  race.  My  constituents  have  rights 
as  sacred  as  those  of  the  national  creditor.  It  is  my  high  duty  and 
privilege  to  defend  them  on  this  floor,  and  1  shall  make  no  apology 
for  the  ardor  and  persistency  with  which  I  discharge  this  duty  and 
exercise  this  privilege. 

Does  anybody  doubt  that  the  Senators  from  Massachusetts  would 
rise  with  indignation  if  anybody  should  stigmatize  as  blubber-gam- 
blers, whalebone-speculators,  and  members  of  an  "  oil  ring,"  the 
bronzed  whalemen  of  Nantucket  and  New  Bedford  who,  when  fortune 
has  favored,  bring  safely  into  port  the  wealth  which  they  have  not 
obtained  by  wrecking  railroads  or  by  watering  railroad  stocks  or  by 
puts  and  calls  and  short  corners  in  stocks,  but  which  they  have  created 
by  struggling  with  the  cold,  the  darkness,  the  storms,  and  the  crush- 
in"  ice-tloes  of  Arctic  seas.  And  why  should  I  restrain  my  indigna- 
tion when  I  hear  the  stigmatizing  epithet  of  "bonanza  swindlers" 
applied  to  my  constituents  who  are  to-day  toiling  in  gloomy  passages 
under  exhausting  heats,  two  thousand  feet  below  the  surface  of  the 
earth,  away  from  the  cheering  light  of  day,  in  an  industry  which  is 
believed  to  pay  less  profit  upon  the  average  than  any  other  known 
to  man?  I  do  not  shrink  from  the  comparison  of  the  ways  and 
methods  of  the  acquisitions  of  wealth  in  the  mining  industry  on  the 
Pacific  coast  with  the  ways  and  methods  of  its  acquisition  anywhere 
on  earth,  and  least  of  all  with  the  ways  and  methods  of  Wall  street, 
where  these  attacks  upon  my  constituents  originate. 

Leaving  personal  and  local  matters  aside,  I  will  conclude  with  a 
brief  reference  to  the  frantic  appeals  that  come  to  us  from  certain 
quarters  to  rally  to  the  rescue  of  the  ancient  honor  of  the  Republic, 
which  it  is  declared  is  now  held  aloft  by  less  than  a  dozen  States  in 
the  Union.  It  is  said  that  this  nation  will  lose  the  high  position 
which  it  has  maintained  for  a  hundred  years  in  the  family  of  nations 
if  the  pending  bill  shall  pass.  It  is  said  that  even  the  discussion  of 
a  measure  to  restore  to  the  country  the  power  to  perform  its  contracts 
in  the  terms  in  which  they  are  written  has  to  no  inconsiderable 
extent  disparaged  us  iu  the  eyes  of  the  world. 

Whence  come  the  really  dangerous  assaults  upon  the  good  name  of 
the  nation  i  Is  it  not  from  certain  members  of  Congress  who  de- 
nounce this  bill  as  a  "  pickpocket  bill"  and  as  a  scheme  to  issue  clipped 
coins,  forgetting  that  the  clippings  were  stolen  from  the  pockets  >i 
the  people  and  are  now  found  in  the  pockets  of  their  creditors  ?    And 


30 

is  it  not  from  the  leading  metropolitan  and  eastern  press,  which  de- 
nounces the  supporters  of  the  bill  as  swindlers  and  repudiators,  and 
declares  itself  to  have  the  honor  of  this  nation  in  its  special  charge  ? 
By  what  title  does  any  faction  set  itself  up  as  being  par  excellence  the 
guardians  of  the  honor  of  the  country?  Sir,  that  honor  can  repose 
nowhere  so  pecurely  as  in  the  keeping  and  hearts  of  the  peox>le. 
There  is  its  shrine  and  there  alone  can  it  find  protection. 

In  what  manner  and  by  what  methods  has  the  New  York  and  east- 
ern press  sustained  the  honor  of  the  nation  of  which  it  proclaims  itself 
the  special  guardian  ?  Only  by  libels  upon  the  character  and  per- 
sonal motives  of  every  public  man  who  cannot  see  the  justice  of 
robbing  the  Government  and  people  by  enhancing  the  value  of  the 
money  in  which  debts  are  to  be  paid ;  by  open  and  shameless  appeals 
to  the  President  to  make  a  corrupt  use  of  his  patronage,  to  influence 
votes  in  Congress  against  the  silver  bill ;  by  the  pretension,  as  false 
as  it  is  humiliating,  that  Congress  dares  not  resist  the  decrees  of  or- 
ganized capital. 

The  New  York  Tribune  of  January  7,  1878,  said: 

The  President  knows  that  men  can  he  held  true  to  republican  pledges  as  to  finance 
if  they  know  that  their  truth  will  mean  favor  as  to  appointments. 

Three  days  later  the  same  paper  said : 

The  capital  of  the  country  is  organized  at  last  and  we  shall  see  whether  Congress 
will  dare  to  fly  in  its  face. 

These  newspapers  claim  to  "be  read  largely  in  Europe,  and  undoubt- 
edly the  newspapers  of  the  commercial  cities  are  the  only  American 
newspapers  read  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  What  impression 
of  our  people  and  our  public  affairs  and  public  men  is  likely  to  pre- 
vail in  Europe,  which  sees  only  those  American  newspapers  in  which 
the  majority  in  Congress  is  daily  denounced  as  made  up  of  silver 
swindlers,  repudiators,  or  lunatics,  and  in  which  it  is  daily  repre- 
sented that  Congress  can  be  corrupted  by  the  President's  patronage 
and  intimidated  by  the  threats  of  organized  capital  ?  What  better 
than  a  roaring  farce  is  it  for  the  editors  engaged  in  this  work  of 
defamation  to  style  themselves  the  peculiar  champions  of  the  honor 
of  the  nation  ? 

The  attempt  to  persuade  the  President  to  use  his  patronage  as  a 
corrupting  agency  seeming  to  have  failed  and  Congress  by  votes  at 
various  times  and  in  decisive  numbers  having  exhibited  a  determi- 
nation to  "  fly  in  the  face  of  the  organized  capital  of  the  country,"  1  ho 
latest  movement  has  been  to  defame  those  who  could  neither  be  pur- 
chased nor  intimidated.  No  longer  invoking  the  President  to  buy 
Senators,  these  gold  organs  charge  that  Senators  have  sought  to  sell 
their  votes,  and  they  furnish  us  with  lengthy  homilies  upon  the  decay- 
ing  morality  of  this  body.  The  same  press  that  day  after  day  has 
declared  that  it  was  the  most  urgent  duty  of  the  Chief  Magistrate  to 
trade  patronage  for  votes  in  favor  of  what  is  called  honest  money 
now  shed  bitter  tears  over  a  story  of  their  own  invention,  that  mem- 
bers of  this  body  have  been  waiting,  watching,  hoping,  and  asking 
o  be  bribed.   The  New  York  Times  of  the  12th  instant  editorially  says : 

The  United  States  Senate  has  sunk  so  far  below  the  standard  with  which  it  was 
ormerly  associated  that  the  propositions  which  we  yesterday  gave  as  in  circula- 
tion at  Washington  excite  little  or  no  surprise.  There  are  Senators  who  have  so 
little  intelligence  and  principle  that  they  do  not  know  their  own  minds  in  regard 
to  the  silver  question,  or  so  little  conscience  that  they  are  ready  to  vote  for  or 
against  the  pending  bill.  They  imagine  that  it  is  popular.  Provided  they  receive 
a  quid  pro  (/no,  however,  they  are  willing  to  run  the  risk  of  unpopularity.  They 
are  ready,  in  short,  to  sell  their  votes  to  the  President,  and  aid  in  defeating  the 
bill  if  he  will  only  pay  their  price.    It  is  hi  utod  that by  adopting  this  bribery  plan 


31 

the  President  may  not  only  dak**  the  Kaui'billfbul  als< i.v  Brtablinh  Braieahte 

relatione  between  bia  administration  and  Senators  who  are  atyresenl  Inimical. 
The  explanation  does  but  aitil  to  the  disgrace  of  those  who  offer  It. 

It  was  Joab  who  said  to  Amasa:  "  Art  thou  in  health,  my  brother!" 
and  "so  ho  smote  him    *    *    *    in  the  fifth  rib."    The  journals  from 

which  I  have  quoted  scorn  to  have  been  equally  solicitous  concerning 
the  national  honor,  and  while,  tenderly  inquiring  as  to  its  health  deal 
deadlv  stabs  like  these. 

How  would  British  honor  and  credit  stand  in  the  world  s  esl  imation 
if  the  London  newspapers  should  combine  to  represent  that  the  Brit- 
ish Parliament  dared  not  resist  the  dictation  of  organized  capital;  that 
the  Crown  could  secure  any  legislation  by  gifts  of  commissions  to 
offices,  and  that  the  members  of  the  Lords  and  Commons  were  wait- 
ing and  eager  to  be  bribed?  How  much  of  the  British  honor  and 
credit  would  be  left  if  these  same  newspapers  should  represeni  that 
the  constituencies  in  a  majority  of  the  boroughs  and  shires  of  England 
were  as  corrupt  as  their  representatives,  and  were  fully  in  accord  with 
them  in  the  passage  of  laws  designedly  and  wickedly  framed  to  rob 
creditors  and  violate  national  faith  ?  How  much  of  British  honor  and 
credit  would  be  left  if  these  same  newspapers  should  urge  the  Crown 
to  bribe  the  Lords  and  Commons  with  patronage,  to  pass  laws  or  to 
refuse  to  pass  laws  in  order  that  that  honor  might  be  protected  against 
the  knavish  instincts  and  designs  of  the  great  mass  of  the  citizens  of 
Great  Britain. 

But  if  the  British  Parliament  should  refuse  to  he  bribed  and,  carry- 
ing  out  the  wishes  of  the  people,  should  enact  the  laws  denounced  as 
being  dishonest,  and  if  the  world  should  discern  that  the  laws  so 
passed,  instead  of  violating  contracts,  promoted  the  fulfillment  of  their 
Strict  letter,  would  British  honor  then  be  tarnished?  Would  it  uot 
rather  be  the  London  press,  that  had  vilified  its  own  people,  which 
would  receive  the  brand  of  public  reprobation  ? 

In  this  country  the  national  honor  has  never  been  tarnished  and 
never  has  been  in  danger  of  being  tarnished  by  those  who  propose  to 
restore  the  ancient  money  in  which  every  national  bond  is  on  its 
face  payable.  If  the  credit  of  this  country  is  in  auy  danger,  it  is 
from  the  charges  of  the  opposing  faction  that  a  majority  of  the  citi- 
zens of  a  majority  of  the  States  of  this  Union  are  innately  dishonest. 
Let  the  gold  press  of  this  country  not  forget  that  while  power  usu- 
ally begets  intolerance  it  always  begets  resistance.  It  is  boastfully 
declared  that  capital  is  now  "organized  at  last,  and  that  we  shall  see 
whether  Congress  will  dare  to  Ily  in  its  face."  How  long  is  it  since 
the  slaveholders  of  this  country,  intoxicated  by  the  long  possession  of 
absolute  sway,  declared  that  cotton  was  king,  and  that  grass  should 
grow  on  the  'streets  of  northern  cities  if  its  royal  prerogatives  were 
fntei  fered  with  1  The  southern  men  who  hear  me  know  that  it  was  the 
arrogance  begotten  of  irresponsible  power,  the  dominating  spirit  en- 
gendered by  slavery, that  provoked  and  precipitated  the  revolution  by 
which  ife  was  destroyed.  Are  the  same  people  who  oarried  that  revo- 
lution through  tire  and  blood  on  the  bayonets  of  three  millions  of  men 
likely  to  he  patient  under  the  taunt  that,  their  chosen  representatives, 
sitting  here  under  the  Dome  of  this  Capitol,  dare  not  ily  in  the  face  of 
the  organized  money-lenders  and  bondholders  of  the  country  ?  Thank 
God  and  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  the  patient  heroism  that 
made  it  a  vitalizing  forceand  the  Constitution  that  crystallized  it  into 
law,  the  people  of  this  country  are  furnished  with  a  better  method  of 
righting  wrongs  and  asserting  rights  than  a  resort  to  arms;  and  with 
not.  less   resolution   and  enthusiasm   than   wars  against   oppression 


This  V-  m?1 


32 


inspire  will  they  in  peaceful  methods  and  under  the  forms  of  law 
trample  under  foot  any  power  that  seeks  through  corruption  or  intim- 
idation to  intrench  itself  in  this  citadel  of  their  liberties.  They  will 
see  to  it  that  this  remains  a  popular  government  in  fact  as  well  as  in 
name,  and  despite  the  craft  of  the  cunning  and  the  wiles  of  the  wicked 
that  their  representatives  in  this  Capitol  register  through  constitu- 
tional laws  their  imperial  will.  [Applause  in  the  galleries  and  on 
the  floor.] 


B     IRY 


i-CS  ANGELES  ^ 


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